Sperare: The Rising
by Hileigh007
Summary: “Just remember, Lucas, there’s a body bag out there with your name on it, and I’m doing up the zip. Everyday, you’ll wake up and ask yourself, is this the day? Because mark me, you will die by my hand. And anyone who gets in my way will be treated with th
1. Prologue

**Title**: Sperare: The Rising (Introduction)  
**Author name**: Hileigh  
**Author email**: link  
**Category**: Gundam Wing  
**Sub Category**: drama, angst, action/adventure, romance, humor, supernatural, mystery, suspense, sci-fi, fantasy...all of the above  
**Keywords**: keywords are stupid. Keywordsdeath.  
**Rating**: PG-13  
**Summary**: When a world war threatens to tear the earth asunder, its up to seven unlikely heroes to keep everything from falling apart. But will they save mankind before they kill each other? Evil minions, love triangles, torture chambers, bats out of hell, cheeky grins, smarmy gits, and lots of estrangement. Oh, and no gundams, yet.  
**Chapter Summary**: This isn't a chapter. Just setting the stage...

**DISCLAIMER**: This story is based on the Gundam Wing series and involves original characters and situations owned by Bandai. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. However, characters including but not limited to Raven, Stars, Lander, Kale, Cat, Corin, Kenji, Athens, Odin, Mac, Thais, Dyrin, Tnepres, Silo, Rapier, and Khan are copyright (c) Me, aka Hileigh. Other citations will be provided when needed.

**Author's Note**: I decided to go ahead and post the prologue…it should answer a few questions. ; Enjoy!

_Prologue_

_He who fights monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. _

_And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you._

_-Unknown._

The year is AC 221. The Earth Sphere as we know it no longer exists. In the year AC 217, a terrorist group known as Zodiac launched nuclear warheads and advanced weapons of mass destruction at the colonies and the major cities of Earth: London, Moscow, Beijing, Bombay, Quebec, and Los Angeles. The targeted nations retaliated without asking questions, and by the year AC 219, the world government and economy was no more. The former Earth Sphere, under the reestablished Sanc Kingdom, dissolved and split into two warring halves: Kanor and Fovuc.

The new world is full of struggles and tribulation. Warfare and its aftermath has wiped out most of the population between the ages of 45-80; the young and robust easily rise through the ranks to lead and defend the new countries, fighting with strength and compassion to do everything in their power to end the war.

Despite the total annihilation of everything familiar – cities, economy, natural resources, social structure – some things will always remain the same. One element will always hinder humanity – the heart of man. Men crave power, even in times of death, destruction, and mourning. And power corrupts all. Throughout the Earth, other wars emerge on the streets of the wounded cities, in the abandoned plains, and on the watchful halos that are the space colonies. Fights for the control that was lost with The Fall ensue; rival groups and unholy creatures of the night prowl the streets. Anyone can become a prey – and anyone can be a predator.

However, not all things have gotten worse. Many believe the damage done to the economy by The Fall was in fact a blessing. The value of the American dollar, Europe's Eurodollar, and Asia's yen did not change, though material possessions like stock and property crumbled. The age of industry, steel, machines, and technology was suddenly thrown back centuries. A sentiment of brotherhood and kindred spirits crossed class lines and swept the countries. But, as in all instances of unity, there comes a quiet suspicion, a seed of doubt that can shake the foundations of the strongest heart.

In addition to the turmoil of The Fall, another revolution arises. A secret can only be kept for so long, and time is rapidly dissipating, even more so as the wartime becomes more intense. In the year AC 205, nine years before The Fall, a select group of scientists began work on an extremely classified project – a project involving the fabric of the universe. Science and technology had reached such a level that anything was possible, a fact that turned into the world's greatest strength as well as its greatest weakness. By means of both atomic and temporal manipulation, the scientists created a rip in the Universal Plane of consciousness, opening the Spiritual Plane – and several others – to the Earth. For most, nothing happened. No change was wrought, and none knew of the incident. But for some, a select few with a certain preordained aptitude, a new world was opened, a world of supernatural and co-planar abilities. But with no one to guide them, the recipients of these powers have been proverbial guinea-pigs to whatever fate dealt them. Now, sixteen years have passed since the Rip, and the Empowered are becoming stronger…their powers are manifesting, and can no longer be ignored. However, they have no physical distinctions…for the few people who know of The Rip, targeting the ones affected is near impossible. Some are not even aware of their abilities. You could be one…so could I.

The land of Kanor – made up of the former United States, South America, Canada, and possessing the loyalty of colonies 1, 2, and 4 – is dedicated to peace and returning the standard of life back to normalcy. Kanor advocates a strong policy of recovery and reform, picking up the broken pieces, fixing what they can, and moving on. Although millions of people migrated from all over the universe to Kanor after The Fall, the American values of life, liberty, and freedom remain preeminent. Though the central and state governmental powers collapsed, the many peoples remain proud, strong willed, and forever loyal – they will survive and triumph, and do what has to be done. They rally under the leadership of former official Zechs Marquise and former gundam pilots Heero Yuy and Duo Maxwell. The capital 'Core City' of Kanor is the former city of Chicago, which also hosts the headquarters of the Kanori defense, the Intelligence Command (KIC).

Fovuc, consisting of the former entities throughout Eastern Europe and Asia, including Japan, has fallen under the unitary rule of Istvan Khan; he also claims the support of colonies 3 and 5. A dashing young politician, Khan is on the receiving end of massive support in Fovuc, and has built the massive 'Glass City', Glastadt, on the ruins of Berlin, Germany. He preaches a new, united world under his rule that will usher in a new era of life…only he wants to kill off the Kanori and establish a massive colonial dictatorship. The many peoples supporting him don't seem to realize that Khan's platform involves world domination, and the fact that he orchestrated The Fall is written off as happenstance. But even with all of his armies and elite society to back him, before Khan can destroy what is left of the world order and claim it for his own, he must make Kanor fall.

The Kanori, however, will not give up easily. They have organized alliance task forces of their best young freedom fighters to combat the Fovucian offensive, the most elite of which is Sperare – 'the hope'. Young and secret, the four members of Sperare are sacrificing their lives and working with all they are to stop Khan and expand the Kanori territory.

Galen 'Stars' Yuy leads the Sperare team. Nineteen-year-old son of Heero Yuy and Relena Peacecraft, Stars was one of the heirs apparent to the reestablished Sanc Kingdom until it was destroyed in the aftermath of The Fall. To protect him from the terrorists that killed his mother, the public was led to believe that he perished in the infamous raid of the Sanc Kingdom's Western European palace. Instead of using his rightful name, he is addressed by his task force call sign, Dante, at all times, a name that inspires awe and reverence among other task force members. The people who know his true identity can be counted on one hand. Stars' quiet, thoughtful, and self-contained disposition along with his depth and objectiveness make him the perfect leader. He is strictly fair, but without mercy. Capable, efficient, and strong, Stars excels in combat, and especially enjoys the art of swordplay.

Kale Peacecraft, at twenty-one, is the oldest member of Sperare. The only child of Zechs Marquise and Lucrezia Noin, Kale was raised with his cousins in the royalty of the Sanc Kingdom, though his father no longer claimed a title. Both extremely skilled and extremely arrogant, he is a masterful tactician with a razor sharp wit. Sporting a life-size superiority complex, Kale doesn't like to be beaten – it's a great show of respect that he does not object to Stars' leadership of Sperare. He is the sort of person who is always learning from every experience and constantly striving to better himself in combat, though he would never let on that he has anything to learn to those around him. Smooth, cunning, and hopelessly ruthless, Kale, with the rest of Sperare is one of the most hunted men on Earth. By law of protection and self-preservation, all of their identities are hidden from the public. Kale is simply known as Paris.

Ex-street racer Lander Maxwell is Sperare's demolitions expert. Despite the fact that he loves to blow things up and cause general chaos, his surprisingly clandestine nature has earned him the nickname of Merlin. Lander has a special affinity with cars, mechanics, and electronics, which he does not hesitate to use in reconnaissance. The 'trickster' of the group, he is always into something, and his never-say-die attitude never fails to cheer the others up. Having spent his childhood divided between the streets of Chicago and the streets of colony L2, Lander knows the workings of the inner city like no other. As the son of Duo Maxwell and Hilde Schbeiker, Lander was brought up knowing how to handle himself; as it stands, his only known weakness is powdered sugar.

The last member of Sperare is Aurora 'Raven' Yuy, twin to Stars and daughter of Heero and Relena. She shares the anonymity of the others – after all, it is believed that Aurora Yuy died with her mother and brother in the palace fires of AC 217. Answering to the call sign 'Ariel', Raven is under the protectorate of not one, but three overprotective brothers who would do absolutely anything to ensure her safety. Raised as the only girl among boys, she is quite capable of just about anything, and can match each of the other members of Sperare in skill. Passionate, protective, and proud, Raven fights with every part of her being, harboring secrets and holding insurmountable pain that only drive her on. Though she still has a way of bringing peace and joy to all she touches, the once exuberant, life-loving girl has been affected greatly by The Fall and other events in kind. The death of her mother and her steadily increasing hyper-empathic abilities has given her a certain worldly outtake – an old soul looks through her chameleon eyes. Stars may lead Sperare in battle, but she leads them in heart, and therefore is the key to winning the war…if only all the odds weren't stacked against her.

Fovuc is also more than prepared to take extreme action against Kanor. Along with armies and special operations groups, Khan employs a number of elite factions and boasts the most advanced assassin league in the world, the Killer Angels.

The leader of the Fovucian forces is a ruthless young general named Alex Rapier. With all of Fovuc's resources at his fingertips, Rapier is one of the most powerful men in the political world as well as the underground. He commands every aspect of Khan's arsenal, and is the mastermind behind The Hive, the most advanced scientific lab on the planet, and the Council of Truth, the massive torture chambers that lie deep beneath Glastadt. Though he sits at Khan's right hand, Rapier is his own man, and does things for his own sick reasons, though no one can deny the utter blackness of his heart. Strong, smart, skillful, and handsome, he shows no mercy, and will never let a target go easily – especially not one as tempting as Sperare.

It's not easy being a woman, particularly when you're a member of the one and only Killer Angels. But eighteen year old Catriona Winner prides herself on her superior skill, and in her four years of service has risen as the top sniper in the most elite rank of the Killer Angels – Pegasus. Exuding the air of an untouchable, Cat excels at clean, quick murder, in the name of 'justice'. In the years since she ran away from her peace-loving family in the neutral entity of Switzerland, Cat has seen her share of demons in the employ of the ultra-exclusive Angels. Elegant, sassy, and better than you at just about everything, Cat believes whole-heartedly in the motives behind Fovuc. If every kill will lead to a better world, then so be it.

No operative in the history of Fovuc has ever risen in the ranks as fast as twenty-year-old Athens Tremale. As a Dragon in the Killer Angels, Athens works under Cat as her partner, however rumor has it that he's going to be moving up to Pegasus rank with her soon. Kind and reserved, Athens is the last person anyone would expect to be an expert warrior. Equipped with an un-earthly sense of understanding and an endless string of good advice, Athens gets along well with everyone, his only conflicts being with people who fall short in self-worth. His dark brown eyes have and untold depth, and there aren't many problems he can't solve amicably. He seems so apathetic sometimes, it's as if he knows things that others don't…or maybe he just holds a different sort of scarring from The Fall.

Fovuc bases its largest underground intelligence ring in the country of Japan, and on the streets of Tokyo, one man is always able to stay one step ahead of them. Kenji Sakamori, a twenty-year-old orphan, was a member of the Fovucian Tactical Information Retrieval Team until he left one day over personal conflicts. Now, back on the streets of his native Japan, he's back to what he did best as a child – theft. Kenji lives a double-identity as the revered Pagan, a thief of thieves with untold skill who never gets caught and is held in high regard in the dark Tokyo underworld. Though at night he walks the shadows, during the day he is back to being Kenji, the angry rebel with a 'let the world handle itself' attitude.

Twenty-two year old Corin Barton doesn't want anything to do with anyone. Though he's one of the highest ranking men in Fovuc, second only to Rapier, he works alone as the single best assassin on the planet. Known only as 'The Hunter', Corin is feared by the ordinary and extraordinary alike. With unmatched skills and a past that has earned him his own dark legend, he alone knows that he fights for the sake of the weak and an ending to the madness. Many would say he is not human – everyone recoils from the flat, ruthless expression in his eyes, the coldness lurking there. He certainly feels no remorse or regret or love, so they say – only hatred. Corin agrees. They all fear his very name. And so they should.

Read it? Review!


	2. Part One

**Title**: Sperare: The Rising – Chapter One - Masquerade  
**Author name**: Hileigh  
**Author email**: link  
**Category**: Gundam Wing  
**Sub Category**: drama, angst, action/adventure, romance, humor, supernatural, mystery, suspense, sci-fi, fantasy...all of the above  
**Keywords**: keywords are stupid. Keywordsdeath.  
**Rating**: PG-13  
**Summary**: When a world war threatens to tear the earth asunder, it's up to seven unlikely heroes to keep everything from falling apart. But will they save mankind before they kill each other? Evil minions, love triangles, torture chambers, bats out of hell, cheeky grins, smarmy gits, and lots of estrangement. Oh, and no gundams.

**Chapter Summary**: Creepy invisible stalker-men stalk, the Bobbsey Twins take up synchronized swimming, man-eating hills become vegetarians, fifty feet of double-sided masking tape is still dangerous, Really Big Problems are Really Big Problems, a trek to the Pyramids only takes ten minutes, and Elmur Fudd chases Little Bunny Foo Foo while eating three Twinkies, a pop tart, and sour cream and onion potato chips. In another country, everything is made of glass, except not really. More people than you can count _almost_ get killed for no good reason at all, Dragons break into (and out of) dungeons, protocol gets broken more than once, and proper decorum is just thrown right out the window.

**DISCLAIMER**: This story is based on the Gundam Wing series and involves original characters and situations owned by Bandai. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. However, characters including but not limited to Raven, Stars, Lander, Kale, Cat, Corin, Kenji, Athens, Odin, Mac, Thais, Dyrin, Tnepres, Silo, Rapier, and Khan are copyright © Me, aka Hileigh. Also, collecting quotes has been sort of a hobby of mine for ages. Sometimes, I don't know where they're from, but if I do, I'll list it. If you see a quote that is not cited and you know where it's from, please tell me so I can give the author proper credit. Quote sources including but not limited to Buffy, Blackadder, Red Dwarf, Farscape, Dawson's Creek, Friends, and Frasier are copyright © their original authors. Other citations will be provided when needed.

**Author's Note**: The entire Sperare trilogy takes place in the year AC 221, twenty-six years after the original series. The characters in focus in this fanfic are older than the characters in the canon, and will behave accordingly. Mature themes should be expected. Also, the futures of the original characters have been interpreted to better the setting of this fanfic. In no way is this story a continuation of the original series, nor should it be considered 'real'.

**Sperare is Latin for 'to hope.' It is pronounced spur-ARE-ay**

**!PLEASE READ! – Due to demand and several well-calculated threats, this is the actual Chapter One of Sperare: The Rising. The original chapter is not divided into sections like I have done/will be doing here. However, due to certain complaints that the chapters are over a hundred pages long each…I decided to post it divided. See what I do for you guys? …And for the sheer reason that I desperately need response on it, both the encouraging kind and the critical kind, and people tend to see novel-length fics and run the other way. But REALLY, I need to know if there is going to be any interest in this story…it's far too epic to continue if there are no readers.So I beg...if you read, REVIEW!**– Audra

This chapter is dedicated to my wonderful, darling betas: Melanie, who is always there to poke me into writing. And Kaley, who is never afraid to say, "Gee, that really sucks." Love you guys J

Chapter One – Masquerade – Part One

_"One of life's primal situations; the game of hide and seek. Oh, the delicious thrill of hiding while the others come looking for you, the delicious terror of being discovered, but what panic when, after a long search, the others abandon you! You mustn't hide too well. You mustn't be too good at the game. The player must never be bigger than the game itself." – Jean Baudrillard_

ooo

ooo

Cosmic jet Kanori Skyrocket 451 was exactly on time. It had left its launch pad in Baltimore at precisely 2:45 in the afternoon, approximately fifteen minutes ago; destination: colony L2.

Airline captain Neil Coleman mentally checked over his instruments while answering his co-captain's verbal checklist.

"Altitude?"

"Check."

"Fuel?"

"Check."

"Boosters?"

"Check."

"Air pressure?"

"Check."

The co-captain, Tony, stretched within the constraints of his double-breasted seat belt and smiled good-naturedly. "Weather looks great too. And there aren't any asteroids in the forecast. Should be smooth sailing all the way to L2, captain. We clear the atmosphere in thirty seconds. Twenty-nine….twenty-eight…"

ooo

ooo

In first class, Carina Espier looked fondly at her husband as he comically tried to find the best answers to the rapid-fire questions being relayed by their five-year-old daughter, Aria.

"How do planes fly? Why are we being pushed back in the seats? Why do I have to have my seat-belt on? Are we in space yet? How long till we get there? Can I look out the window? Why do stars float? Why, daddy?"

"Err…what was the first one again?"

Aria laughed delightfully. "Daddy, you're so silly! Isn't he funny, mama?"

Carina smiled. "Yes, darling, he is." She turned away and looked out the jet's small window, a soft smile still gracing her face, and again thought of how fortunate it was that her family could be with her for this business trip. As an ambassador to L2, time spent with her family was rare. Ever since The Fall and the start of the New War, Kanor had counted on her to keep communications and intelligence open with its allied colonies. Anything to help her nation.

Funny how five years can change someone, she thought wryly. After all, it had only been five years since The Fall – the vast terror and the bombing of the great cities. Still, despite the youngness of the new country, she felt fiercely protective of Kanor, and like most citizens, gladly gave her services to better the Kanori front.

She was a lightfoot ambassador, of course – she traveled to many places instead of just one from her home in Baltimore. It was the only way she could stay in Kanori territory and not have to move her family into other…unfriendly venues. L2 was by far the farthest point for her, though, and she was relieved when her superior suggested she take her family along with her. Sighing in contentment for the first time in a long time, she turned her attention back to her husband and daughter as the plane prepared to exit the Earth's atmosphere.

ooo

ooo

In coach seat 15B, Muriel Creighton clutched at her arm-rest. She was getting too old for this. And all to see that rogue son of hers on the colony. He had a wife now, and children. It was past time for her to meet them.

She felt her stomach turn and closed her eyes tightly. First that retched launch, and now this. 'Exit,' she thought they called it. Something about leaving Earth's gravity. She liked the Earth just fine, thank you. This flying business could be saved for all the young people running around these days, if you asked her. The inertia pushing her back increased slightly. Yes, she was definitely getting too old for this.

ooo

ooo

Approximately seventeen minutes into flight, Kanori Skyrocket 451 exploded into a red ball of fire. The debris arched up and out, until the Earth's gravity brought it down again to rest with the ashes.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

The unseen eyes watched the pair from his vantage point. The two fighters were garbed in total fencing uniform, from head to toe. They had been sparring for well over two hours now, but the time hadn't slowed their movement. Even through his closeness to them, he could barely make out anything save a seamless white blur, though he knew from earlier study what he would see if they were still. One, who stood to the right, was tall and broad-shouldered, but as quick on his feet as the other. The other, on the left, was shorter. Though, the watcher thought wryly, not _that_ short – the second fighter was a little less than a head shorter than the first. His frame was much smaller as well. Perhaps younger, he thought.

The watcher couldn't help but smirk at his own brilliance. Oh, how easy it would be to get caught up in the reckless arrogance that he was practically invisible and – wait, scratch that, he _was_ bloody invisible. He could be standing on the very mat with the fighters and they would not see him. Well…maybe. He frowned. Even so, he was watching them and they didn't know. Gold star for him. Man, the tower was lucky that he was such a humble guy. At that thought, he was reminded exactly how he was able to be here in one of the most high-tech and secretive training halls in the entire country; he had been aided by the higher-ups, naturally – higher-ups that had a tendency to watch their agents in action, especially on a case like this. He hastily turned his attention back to the two fighters. Best not make the brass angry.

They were very good. He wasn't one to exaggerate when he spoke – well, he wasn't exaggerating now. Though the fighters were unmatched in size, they seemed perfectly matched in skill. It took all his talent to follow their blurred movements. They seemed to know each other well…it was as if each could predict the other's movement before it was executed. He frowned again. Of course, they were very different in style. The smaller of the two was quick and bold in his attacks, while the other used a more calculating, forceful style.

He was jerked out of his reverie at the sound of a shrill bell…or something. He jumped and looked around guiltily before realizing that the fight had immediately stopped. The smallest fighter was searching his pockets and brought out a small silver device that the watcher recognized as a cell phone. The fighter stared at the screen momentarily before putting the infernal noise-maker (which had finally shut up) back into his pocket.

His attention was caught momentarily by the tall fighter, who had moved without a word and grabbed the other's sword, along with his own, and walked to the adjacent wall to hang them. When the fighter turned his attention back to his partner, the watcher's attention turned as well.

And his mouth dropped open. The other fighter had taken off his white fencing helmet. And…he was a she. Dark, mahogany hair fell to her waist, and bangs of the same color nearly covered her eyes. Nearly. And judging by the fact that the other fighter, who had also taken off his helmet (he sighed in relief to see that this fighter was _not_ actually a woman) had the same high cheekbones and richly-colored hair, the two were related. Probably brother and sister.

_Holy shit._

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Galen Stars Yuy shrugged into the sleeves of his navy-blue blazer as he half-walked, half-trotted out of the building. He didn't have to look to know that his sister was beside him, pulling her hair back with quick, practiced fingers. As they cleared the barn door of the large training hall, habit made him stop, and turn.

A very computer-generated, very feminine voice called out to them. "Thank you for coming to visit, Mister and Miss Yuy." Ah, the joys of technology.

"No problem, Caitlin. Lockdown, level three."

Immediately, layers of steel bars came from the ceiling and the sides and barred the door; a rather flimsy-looking set of wood doors swung closed to complete the security.

The 'Barn,' as it was called, was very much, to all appearances, an old barn. Granted, a very large, very unstable looking barn; no passer-by would dare enter, for fear of one of the large wooden beams falling on their unsuspecting heads. And if they ever tried to enter…well, they would have more to worry about than wooden beams. Not to mention that Caitlin, the 'security system muse' was programmed to do something 'shocking' in case of any such transgression. None of them had any idea of exactly what that was, but Stars really had no desire to find out. The last time something 'shocking' was administered, the poor bloke that had been walking by was attacked by mechanical shrubbery. All inquiries of his health thereafter had been tactfully dodged. After all, inside the Barn was one of the most advanced gyms on the planet, for use by a select few defense agents in the territory of Kanor. More specifically, it was built for only four agents of Kanor – one team.

Sperare.

He turned and resumed his brisk pace to the rickety shed where his Jeep was hidden. He felt more than saw his sister split from his side and jog to the passenger seat. She grabbed the roller-bar and easily slid in through the open window. He quickly did the same, and then they were speeding down the deserted highway towards the city.

"Well, that was fun while it lasted. I'm glad you talked – no, wait, _tricked_ – me into coming, Stars."

He flashed her a grin, not at all remorseful. "No problem, Raven." It was one of their atypical off days. They weren't restricted to the Core City, but all of them knew better than to stray too far away, no matter how bad they wanted to run to some remote place. So, their activities were more than a little limited. They could train at the KIC; they could sleep; or, they could get drunk. However, considering that the last time the latter occurred, the end results involved bobby pins, fifty feet of double-sided masking tape, and a rather unsavory game of Scrabble, that option wasn't really available. So, he had driven to the Barn at the crack of dawn, dragging his sister with him on impulse – in hope that maybe he could figure out what had been bothering her lately.

Smirking, he turned toward her. He was spoiling for some classic sibling banter. "I needed an easy victory."

Her indignant gasp brought a rare smile to his face. "You did _not_ win, you over-confident pillock! Your constant jealousy of my superior skill has left you woefully deluded. Besides that, it was a draw. We were only fighting for…what, two hours? We didn't even get to round three."

He threw back his head and laughed, enjoying the fact that right now, they could just be brother and sister. Because in twenty minutes, IC headquarters would come into view, and there, they weren't allowed to be human.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

"Want to race back to the station, Sparky?" Lander Maxwell muttered sardonically under his breath. He was sitting behind the wheel of his red Corvette, top down, on the side of a two lane highway. The street they were on was lined with colorful buildings, mostly nightclubs. It was called the Tunnel, and in about twelve hours, it would be _the_ place to be, even on a Monday. At the moment, though, it was completely empty. _Except for me and Mr. Moto-prat_, Lander thought sourly.

"What was that?"

He rolled his eyes at the cop. "Nothing, nothing. Listen, officer --" he peered at the shiny silver nametag "—Shitzenfeltz?" He almost choked trying to swallow his laugh, and turned it into a cough instead. Tee hee hee. Shitzenfeltz. _That_ was funny. The cop – Officer Shitzenfeltz – was starting to look a little red around the ears. He obviously didn't think it was funny, which, Lander thought, was a damn shame. He was going to bite through his lip trying not to laugh; if _he_ had a name like that – well, thank God he didn't. The cop's eyes were hard; nope, no laughter there. Lander cleared his throat and managed a relatively strait face before continuing.

"Officer, I appreciate your dedication to your job, but really --"

"I need to see some identification, son."

Son? The man couldn't have been a day over twenty-five. Lander might only be nineteen, but he was tall and well-built, even if his face had a boyish sort of charm. _He's trying to pull rank on me_, Lander thought incredulously. The thought was so absurd that he laughed aloud without thinking about it. _This little Peacekeeper, trying to patronize _me_, Merlin, First Principle, Alpha Task Force Sperare of Kanor_. How funny. This had never happened before. All the law-enforcement in the city knew he was off limits. Most of the Enforcers and the Peacekeepers knew his fire-engine red car by sight, and they stayed away from him. Not that he would bite or anything; but it was typically good practice to stay out of the way of the guy who was considered to be one of the four most dangerous people in the world. And even if they didn't know his car, the tag on the back spelled out his call sign: Merlin. And _everyone_ knew that name.

Lander felt like a kid in a toy store. Can't I play with the big bad policeman, can't I? Hell yes, he could. "Sorry, but I find it terribly inconvenient to carry IDs. Always lose the little buggers, you know." He started to hum the theme to _Hawaii__ 5-O_ under his breath.

Officer Shitzenfeltz moved his hand to rest on the butt of the gun holstered at his side. His whole face was red now.

_Point for me_, Lander thought gleefully.

"I need to see some ID immediately, or I'll have to detain you." The officer's teeth were clenched so hard that the order came out as more of a snarl.

Lander's face fell into a customary, cold mask. All emotion stripped from his face, he looked at the officer with cold, calculating eyes. He knew that the change was split-second, and completely unsettling. Shitzenfeltz blinked, the beginnings of fear starting to show in his eyes. Lander mentally gave himself another point. He carefully cultured his voice to have a sharp contrast with his face. "Gee, and mom always said never to go anywhere with strangers." He pretended to think. "I could show you my library card?" He said the last words harshly, the threat carrying on the air, and let his violet eyes pierce through the cop; he was rewarded with a flinch. The unspoken words hung in the air between them: _Back off, Barney, I've got a piece_.

"Gosh, officer…you're not going to check my criminal record, are you? I swear, they were all accidents, honest. I didn't mean to run over that other Peacekeeper. He just sort of popped out of nowhere, you know? And I wasn't really drunk in public – okay, so I was the first three times, but those last six were completely unfounded --" His fun was cut short by a sharp beep from his cell phone. A single three digit message was displayed on the screen.

_911_.

Lander turned toward the cop, who was in the process of calling for back-up. "Look, I gotta run, man. It's been fun. No hard feelings, right?"

He didn't wait for the cop's answer, and before Officer Shitzenfeltz noticed that his suspected fugitive was gone, Lander was shifting gears smoothly down the city streets to the IC headquarters.


	3. Part Two

The Earth was bleeding. She had been driven a blow to the heart – she was frozen, and burning; cut, slashed, torn to shreds by the hands of men. The dawn of realization came hard, and late. Her wound had been cauterized, but the scab was slow to heal. So very, very slow. And now, the very ones who caused her downfall were prisoner to her wrath.

A mere five years earlier, the race of men turned their backs on her, stabbing her in the front. The war between the Earth Federation and its colonies had ended a quarter of a century earlier; twenty-six years of peace…only to breed the worst attack, battle, culmination in the history of the universe? None could foretell the horror, or the tragedy. Mankind had basked in the years of peace, almost selfishly hoarding it and taking it for granted. The colonies and the Earth had never been so tranquil. Under the gentle but firm leadership of the Sanc Kingdom, the entire universe blossomed in kindred spirit.

But not even the superior government agencies of the world knew of another amongst them, knew of the plans of the Zodiac. As a very low-key terrorist group, the Zodiac built a façade out of unassuming platforms – the occasional violent protest group, or perhaps sending death threats to world leaders, or stalking pop stars. Of those who even knew of their paltry existence, they were a mere annoyance; certainly nothing worth a closer look. But only January 1, 217, the name no one knew became the name everyone wanted to forget.

In a simultaneous moment, twelve weapons – missiles, warheads, and bombs – were launched against the Earth. Six major cities were hit with nuclear warheads. Six others were spared nuclear attack, for what it was worth. All targeted cities were leveled, and areas surrounding them were in ruin. In the immediate confusion, no world power was quite sure who to blame; as a result, they retaliated without asking questions. The strength of military technology ravished the lands for nearly two years. And as the smoke cleared, only devastation remained. No government still stood; organizations and hopefuls tried to grasp at the reins of leadership, to pull the world into some semblance of order. As a natural born leader, those who stood in the shadows of the Sanc Kingdom's grave stepped forward, offering slight sanctuary and peace of mind to the survivors in the west. Zechs Marquise, Heero Yuy, and Duo Maxwell stood at the forefront as familiar faces and proven leaders. In the name of peace, they called their new nation Kanor --but before they could console the scars of the rest of the world, another blocked their way. In countenance to Kanor, a man named Istvan Khan quickly rose to power, claiming vast European and Asian territory in the name of a new nation: Fovuc.

However, no amount of spiritual and orderly repair could help the Earth. Mountains had fallen, and tectonic fault lines were misplaced. Now, five years after the Fall, earthquakes are not uncommon, even in unlikely places. Even the Earth shakes in the aftermath of the terror. The climate system was torn apart, and weather disasters beat their fury on all the Earth's surface. Landslides and volcanoes have torn at the remaining cities, and the former landscapes of the world are unrecognizable. It is truly a new, unfamiliar country. The creations of men are fragile against the strength of nature, and only the strongest endure.

The skies hold darkness, even in light; and, sometimes, a blood red sun will rise to cast the Earth in its vermillion light.

In Kanor, the holder of the North American continent, the land has returned to the jagged, untamed hills and plains of lore. The city of Los Angeles was hit with a nuclear missile, and land that had been previously weakened through the ages by earthquakes physically split from the continent. California was lost to the Pacific. Both New York and Washington D.C. were so heavily damaged in the onslaught of the Fall's aftermath that they are completely inhospitable, and deserted. Countless other cities were reduced to rubble by the war and by the subsequent wave of natural disasters. Only the city of Chicago remained in true working order. Though damaged, most communication means and electricity still was in tact, and so it became the capital "Core City" of Kanor.

Few other cities were so lucky. Mere handfuls have any sort of electrical or natural power, but the people have learned to adapt to the changing times. Though countless numbers from Europe and Asia migrated to the Kanori territory after the Fall, the majority of the population remains native to the land. And, through all their diversity, American people are unified in one virtue – stubbornness. Their will to survive far overpowers any defeatist sentiments. And so they toil and build, and _live_. In cities – no, villages – life is reduced to agrarian means, with technology pushed back nearly a hundred years. Without electricity, or running water, they thrive, just as their ancestors did, spread throughout the land, but united in spirit.

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The district that served as the headquarters of the Kanori Intelligence Command could only be described as absolutely _sprawling_. It towered up, spread out, and enclosed a hulking seventeen miles in the heart of the Core City.

Its foremost building, with its sloping steps and columned face, was monumental in style. Its classic architecture was only fitting for the home of the entire executive branch of Kanor. Countless other buildings reached out beyond the huge main structure – called the House -- but in some way, all of the outlying buildings were connected, whether through tree-lined, outdoor walkways or enclosed glass bridges. But regardless of the old-world, grandfatherly face of the grounds and main buildings, the security was unmatched. No one really dwelled on exactly what kind of enforcements laid in wake, but the KIC was widely regarded as the safest place in the world.

The grounds themselves were said to be a labyrinth. If you managed to get in without clearance – _if_ being the operative word – the possibility that you would ever get out again was…well, no unauthorized person had ever succeeded in infiltrating the KIC and making it out alive. And in one piece.

The principal center for scientific research, the Cathedral, was housed in the second branch of the gargantuan spread. Complete with its high-tech labs and secret projects, the Cathedral fueled the great powerhouse of Kanor technology.

There was said to be one of the most ruthless prisons known to man hidden somewhere on the grounds. No one doubted it…everyone knew that the high profile, maximum security prisoners were not held in the federal penitentiary in Old Tennessee.

And from the headquarters, passages ran underground to different places all around the city; but only the highest ranking officials in Kanor knew any detail about those.

There was supposedly even a set of luxurious residential apartments where the Leaders could stay, and where some of the higher ranked officers lived. It was said that Chief Leader Zechs Marquise even had a whole building all to himself. But, that was hearsay.

But the most impressive aspect, the pride of Kanor, the very purpose of the KIC, was the defense department. It was the universal symbol of strength and purpose for every person in Kanor. Every task force, whether domestic or elite, came out of the KIC. It was where they were briefed for missions and the like, and where each group's coordinator worked. Most of the large task forces had headquarters on the outskirts of the KIC, but the independents and individuals all worked intimately within the complex. Information retrievers, intelligence analysts…even the public broadcasting network was run out of the Intelligence Command. After all, one of the Leaders' most adamant platforms was to keep the public informed.

And then, there were the offensive groups. The subject of every young boy's dreams, what everyone wanted to be. The legends of Kanor. There were the Windchasers and the Nightstalkers; the Blue Hearts and the Grey Phantoms; the Amazons, the Dauntless, the Halos, the Valkyries. And the best of them all – Sperare. The hope.

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Aurora Raven Yuy adjusted her sunglasses as she and Stars walked down one of the many sidewalks flanking the Homeland Security building of the IC. Her navy pumps made a sharp click with every stride, and added a sort of musical tempo to her racing thoughts. She clenched her fists casually, feeling the wrist-sheaths under her blazer tighten as her muscles flexed. They each held small silver daggers, balanced perfectly just for her. There was another knife hidden on her thigh. It was a good habit to always be armed. You never knew when someone would try to kill you. Better to be careful than to be dead.

Raven walked easily; she was so used to the weapons, it was as if they weren't there. Sometimes, holsters and sheaths could be uncomfortable, but when you had the world's top scientists inventing for your comfort, you didn't have to worry about that. And there was no chance that a passerby would detect the outline of the weapons through her clothes; even the skirt, which was a little clingy, gave no hint of the dagger sheathed under its front. She had a damn good tailor, too.

She was lucky that she had a chunky black pair of sunglasses and an equally good poker-face to hide her thoughts. Her face was calm, casually indifferent, and completely unhurried. Her thoughts were spinning, flipping, exploding.

They had been called in; that was not unusual in itself, even though they had been promised a full week's vacation just last night. Every 'vacation' they'd ever almost had had been interrupted in the same way. It was almost expected. The '911' message hadn't fazed her either; that was always the message they were given, because they only handled the extremely horrible stuff. The save-the-world missions. The fact that they were in 24/7 on those do or die missions was evidence of the lives they led. Nope, no small potatoes for Sperare; it was the whole barbecue or nothing. So it was a normal, potentially world-ending emergency that had been the reason for the call. Of course, all the other alpha-offensive task forces could have been busy, or something, and they were needed for some other, less important life-threatening disaster. But probably not. They were on call so much that she had almost forgotten what it was like to not be working. On any other day, she would have been relieved. The other task forces were good, really good, but if it came down to getting a vacation and letting someone else take over, she would rather do the jobs herself, and she knew her teammates felt the same way. It was probably some deep psychological trust issue she had going, but she didn't care. They all had chosen this way of life almost five years ago; it was just how it was.

She shortened her stride as they turned a corner, bypassing the huge entrance to the main defense building. That was where everyone was supposed to go in; not them, though. She was so used to Stars at her side that they automatically adjusted to each other; her brother was a constant, reassuring presence beside her; but not reassuring enough. She didn't know whether she should be glad about that, or really, really scared.

What was bothering her was the air around her. Lately, the normalcy of the days had been sickening. It had been the same for weeks, months. No attacks on any Kanori territories or vassals, no nothing. It was the very reason they had been given time off…there was nothing to do. Technically, they were the primary offensive task force in Kanor, but usually, all of their…ventures were in response of, or at least caused by, something else. Not that they didn't enjoy starting their own fun and stirring up the Fovucian waters – it was what they did best, certainly. But there had just been that feeling...that something was off; it was that that prevented them from jumping in first.

But today…

She could _taste_ the change in the air on the back of her tongue. It was small, barely there, but to her it seemed huge.

With the excitement of the constant raids and reconnaissance, the constant explosions and the countless clandestine missions…one was always on a sort of adrenaline rush, ready for anything, on your toes. But when it all stopped, and you were forced, rather suddenly, into a normal life….well, that was deflating and completely unsettling. And when that continued for a seemingly endless amount of time, months on end, a feeling of foreboding was inescapable. It left way too much time to think, and that was the last thing any of them wanted. Thinking _hurt_.

Today, it was as if all that had ended. It was even more unsettling to go from nothing to everything in a single breath. The current of fear that their whole world had been built on was back. She shook her head slightly and squared her shoulders, unconsciously walking in sync with Stars.

A laughing voice broke into their silence, "You two have to stop doing that. It's absolutely unnatural. The 'Bobbsey Twins' meets a fleet of synchronized swimmers."

Neither she nor Stars broke their stride, but she inclined her head and smiled as Lander fell into step beside them. Her eyebrow rose as she took in his untucked shirt, disheveled hair, and loose tie. Some things never changed. He let his sunglasses slide down the bridge of his nose, and winked at her with warm violet eyes. "It must be that freaky twin thing. You guys look all evil, walking the same like that, and in uniform. Hell, if I wasn't me and I'd seen the two of you coming at me, I'd have gone running for the hills. Well, I would have gone running for them before that episode in Dublin, where the hills started chasing us. Maybe I could run for the boulevard instead."

Raven grinned. "Yeah, I've heard boulevards are vegetarians."

His reply was cut short as they reached the back entrance of the building: an inconspicuous, glass-like door, tucked into a niche, flanked by two imposing guards. Of course, the door wasn't glass. It was adamantine. All three of them brought their sunglasses away from their eyes. Stars stepped ahead, his arresting presence filling the alcove.

The guard smiled and nodded. "Good to see you again, Dante."

"And you, Hawk."

"Good morning Hawk, Sloane." Raven smiled as she passed them. They were two of the few people in the entire IC that had been there from the beginning, and she was very fond of them.

"Morning, Miss Ariel. Long time no see, Merlin."

Lander grinned and clapped Sloane on the back. "Yeah, it's only been seven whole hours since I was here last. So much for a day off."

They passed through the doors and walked into a long, empty hallway, and down three flights of stairs. Two rights and a left later, and they stood before a short hallway. A tall man was leaning casually next to the hall's only door. When he saw them, he pushed away from the wall, and as the approached, he turned silently and walked further into the building. Without a word, they followed him.

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Raven narrowed her eyes as she followed Stars down the hallway. Kale Peacecraft was tense. He was stunningly handsome, with very refined, blonde good looks that were somewhere between a surfer and a prince. His finely sculpted, patrician features were model-esque, and his ice-blue eyes were always sharp. But there had been a tightness around those eyes, and that full mouth was set in an unhappy way. His shoulders were tight under his jacket. She frowned. The last time Kale had been openly disconcerted, they had almost been cut to ribbons by a bipolar televangelist with a fondness for scissors. She and Kale were favorite cousins, and even though she could read him like a book, he never let his emotions show in sticky situations. He preferred to confront everything with indifference or witty repartee. So either this wasn't a big emergency, or it was a Really Big Problem. She was betting on the latter. Oh, Goody.

_Well, you wanted excitement,_ she thought.

The fact that he hadn't said a word was more disconcerting than anything else. He was an arrogant, sarcastic-but-loveable ass at the best of times. Kale _never_ not said anything.

She quickened her step and moved past Stars to where Kale was leading them. The silence between the four of them was building, and if she was being affected by it, then so were Lander and Stars. The last thing they needed was to get anxious before they even knew about the problem. She had the sudden urge to laugh. Her stomach was already shivering with nerves. So much for the big, bad super-girl.

As she came along side him, she touched his tanned arm to get his attention, and a shock of emotion jolted through her. For a split-second, her vision swam with color, and she was drowning in his emotions – worry, apprehension, and tiredness. She quickly jerked her arm away and brushed her hand against the material of her skirt, as if trying to get the feel of him off of her. He looked down at her through narrowed blue-gray eyes. She met his stare with one of her own, ignoring the lingering chill of senses and silently asking him what was wrong. He turned back to the hall and their destination without so much as an answering look, but as they approached another door, he took her hand and squeezed it reassuringly.

Kale turned upon reaching the door; he didn't bother knocking as he opened it. Taking a deep breath, Raven went in after him, followed closely by Stars and Lander.

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Kale had been in the room before. Hell, he'd spent all morning in it. Unlike the others, he had come into the IC early that morning to meet with his father, and in return he was the first of the group to learn of what passed in the early hours of the morning.

Despite outside appearances, it was a large, open room, with glass-like walls. Except the glass was not transparent in the slightest, and it would never break. The room was one of the few offices that was coated in adamantine. It was windowless, as they were underground, but the lighting was not too dim or too harsh. At the end of the room, a long black desk that could double as a conference table sat horizontally. At the moment, it was scattered with maps and file-folders, just as it had when he'd left it. There were two hard-looking black chairs before the desk that Kale knew were actually really comfortable. A painting of the Scottish Moors at sunset was the only spot of color. Although the sparse furniture was harsh, the room was strangely warm and comforting. Maybe because they had spent the better half of five years in it.

Odin Bristow, their coordinator, sat facing them behind the desk, reading some document. He looked up as they walked in.

"Paris," he acknowledged to Kale, and nodded as the others filed in. "Ariel, Dante, Merlin…good, you're all here." Odin was of an average height, with mousy colored blonde-brown hair cut short, but still a little curly. His eyes were pale, pale green, and he had strong, good-looking features. Kale, along with Raven and Stars, had grown up next-door to Odin. Well, as next-door as a mansion could be. He had been one of the founding members of Sperare. Somehow, his identity, including pictures had been made public a little over a year after Sperare had been formed. After the fifth attempt on his life within two hours of the out, he had decided to 'die.' The Leaders had offered him a new identity and a place on a different alpha task force, but he declined and instead became Sperare's coordinator. He was built like a soccer player, lithe but strong, and he had been an excellent operative, but he was an even better coordinator.

Raven and Lander walked to the desk and took seats in the two high-backed executive chairs facing Odin. Stars had leaned indifferently against one of the glass walls to the left of Raven. Kale crossed his arms and, remaining standing, took a post to the right.

"Ares," Raven murmured quietly, "what has happened?" She was perched on the edge of her chair, hands twitching in her lap. Kale watched her face as she tried to hold back her nervousness; she was failing miserably.

Lander was leaned back in his chair unconcernedly, but he wasn't smiling. That usually meant the sky was falling. "Yeah. In case everyone forgot, we're supposed to be on _vacation_. You promised us a whole week this time, man. There better be a damn good reason for bringing us in." Raven gave him an admonishing look, but turned questioning eyes on Odin just the same. And Kale could feel Stars' eyes boring a path across the room to the coordinator.

Odin ran his fingers through his short hair and sighed. "The Leaders think that this is something Sperare should handle, and I agree." Lander started to speak, but was cut off as Odin pressed a concealed button on the tabletop. A static, scratching sound started to play, easily recognizable to them as a 'black box' recording – a tape from the cockpit of an airplane.

"…seven…six…five…four…three…t—"

Kale closed his eyes as an incomparable, awful ripping sound came through the speaker, and then the room was flooded in silence as the recording ended. Even after hearing it fifty times already, it still made him ache. He looked up as Raven let out a choking gasp. Stars, who had somehow crossed the room without him noticing, stood beside her chair and put a hand on her shoulder.

"That was from Kanori Skyrocket 451. It exploded just before leaving the atmosphere about four hours ago. It was one of three to go down – two others, a Pegasus and a Wind Dancer, went down late last night." Odin turned and depressed another button, and a three-dimensional projection sprang up above the middle of the table. "We didn't connect the flights until the Skyrocket went down. Both the Peg and the Dancer's crashes were attributed to weather conditions. But, look at the scan of the Skyrocket." The 3-D blue-prints of a jet-liner appeared in midair. A scanning line passed through the plane, and a number value began flashing above it. "This is ten seconds before the…explosion. That was as close as we could get. This," he pointed to the number, "is the density of the air. The _water_ density."

Stars frowned as he studied the evidence. "Water density? But that's impossible. They were what, ten, twelve seconds from exiting the atmosphere? They would've had to be under a monsoon to experience those kinds of numbers, and at that altitude…there's no way. They were 50,000 feet above the nearest rainstorm."

Odin nodded in agreement. "We realize that. That is precisely the reason this is under such investigation, and you four were brought in. The other two planes were not rockets, and they were under heavy cloud coverage, but their cause of crash was the same as the Skyrocket. Three planes, all within 8 hours of each other. This is what we've been waiting for. It has 'Fovuc' written all over it, and the last thing we need is for Fovuc to have developed some insane way to blow our jets out of the sky."

"But...how can that be?" Raven stood and leaned toward the suspended rocket. "All the other numbers are fine. The scan hasn't reported any unknown devices in the vicinity of the plane…what could they have done, dropped a giant water balloon from outside the atmosphere? And if the satellites didn't pick up any inter-galactic tampering… I understand that this is anything but natural, but even Khan can't magically change the water content in the air. And I understand that the weird water density is the only unusual thing, but that won't crash a plane, and it certainly won't make a plane combust. It doesn't make sense, Odin." She clenched her fists.

Kale stepped forward and touched her arm. She was getting frustrated. "We know that. Like Ares said, that's why we're here." He lowered his voice soothingly. "Have faith, Raven. We'll figure this out." He didn't release her until she nodded and took a deep breath.

Lander, who had been scanning the passenger lists of the flights, looked up and shook his head. "There doesn't seem to have been any specific targets on the planes. Carina Espier was on the Skyrocket, but she hasn't done a thing that would warrant an assassination. It seems like the attacks were completely random." He seethed and crumbled the papers in his fist.

Kale nodded. "We've checked out all the passengers. The crashes weren't suicide missions. Whatever happened was done outside the planes, sometime after they went airborne."

Odin stood and sighed. "Obviously, we don't have any leads. Right now we're on an information hunt. We need to know what, why, and most importantly, how. Usually, we would send off some of the Black Ops or Grey Phantoms to do some investigating, but the Leaders don't want this out yet. Besides, you guys are the best at recon anyway." He shuffled through some file folders. Kale frowned. Odin was…uneasy? "The Skyrocket was too far up to leave any solid debris, and the Pegasus was over water. But the Dancer's crash site is in western Kentucky; we tracked the wreckage to some deserted field. It's a forty minute Helo ride from here, and as far as we know, it's untouched. Since it wasn't bound for space, it wasn't on a scan system, so we don't have much information. Actually, we don't have any information. But that's why I'm sending you." Yes, Odin was definitely uneasy. He was fidgeting. Kale turned toward Stars. His attention was focused piercingly on their coordinator; he had noticed too.

"Dante, you, Paris, and Merlin are going to the Dancer to see what you can find. Ariel, you're going to stay here and act as a land leader…after you go see Doctor Mackenzie."

_There it is, _Kale winced. _Shit. _He had the urge to back up and clasp his hands over his ears. All he could think was that they should have at least disarmed her first. Those knives were sharp. And there was a pencil lying close to her on the desk. Weapons, weapons everywhere.

"_What_!" Raven hissed, eyes flashing dangerously.

Odin put his hands up in defense. "Now Ariel, it really is the best way—"

"The _best way_?" Her voice lowered in quiet disbelief. "How can you say that?" She closed her eyes and shuddered angrily. When she opened them, their ferocity made him take a step back. When she spoke, it was with a deadly edge. "I am sick and tired of having to be _babysat_. I am not a child – something all of you know _very_ well. And I am a member of this task force – Sperare, for God's sake – and I am sick of not being treated like it. In case you forgot, _Ares_, I was not given my position out of _charity_. I _earned_ it."

"Ariel --" Stars started.

"_Shut up, Dante_." She turned her wrath on him. "I'm tired of having to fight through all of this _bloody testosterone_. Eternity in the company of the Killer Angels and all their hellish torture devices will be a picnic compared to five minutes with me and this pencil if you all don't learn to _grow the fuck up_!" Stars' eyes flinched. Raven never, ever cursed. She turned back to Odin. "How many died on those flights?"

"Well—"

"_How many_!"

He sighed. "Six-hundred eleven."

She sucked in a sharp breath and raised her head. "It would be worth it, Ares." Her eyes filled with tears. "It will _always_ be worth it."

He sighed. "Its not my choice this time, Raven. Your f— well, it's just not my choice."

She stilled and narrowed her eyes as understanding hit her. Anger turned the air around her cold. Kale fought the urge to shiver. "Where is _Leader Yuy_?" She clenched her fists. The pencil had somehow wound up in her hand, and the sound of it snapping seemed to resonate through the room.

Odin sighed in defeat. "He's on the grounds, Rave. I don't know where."

She whirled and headed for the door without a word. Stars and Kale moved like lightning and each grabbed a wrist as Lander moved to block the door. She hissed and met each of their eyes; Kale would not have let go if he hadn't seen the pleading sorrow behind her fury. He shook his head as she walked out the door, but tried to block her from his mind as he turned back to the others to work out the details of their little day trip.


	4. Part Three

Raven stalked down the hallways of the Valhalla building like a panther on the hunt. A very _angry_ panther. Each time she met someone in the hall, they hurriedly looked away and sped around her. Her teeth clenched. _Cowards_, she thought.

She knew she was beyond angry; she also knew that that was not a good thing. She hardly ever got this mad anymore; she could feel the anger coursing through her blood like an icy poison. Raven knew that eventually, it would probably make her sick, but right now, that didn't matter. Because when she'd heard Odin, of all people – Odin, her best friend, practically her brother – give the mission assignments, she'd nearly launched herself across the desk and choked him with his own tie.

To say the news had upset her was an understatement. So many innocent people, killed for no apparent reason…it made her heart _ache_. She had always been very sensitive to things like that. Death had always affected her badly, and this time was no exception. The reactions seemed to be getting worse; she had almost been able to feel the pain and sorrow, and only from listening to the recording. There was no doubt, she had to find the reason behind the crashes, and stop the threat before it could consume any other civilian lives.

What she'd said had been true, _was_ true. She hadn't gotten her position on Sperare just because she was one of the Leaders' daughters. None of them had, for that matter. They had been through hell to get to where they were, and in exchange, gave up their lives for the future. If there was a future. It was purely coincidence that they were all practically related. Kale was she and Stars' cousin, of course, and Lander's family was so close to her own that they had might as well have been brother and sister. And Odin, well, they five of them had been inseparable growing up, every summer in the Sanc Kingdom.

A flash of pain seared through her, and she stopped, a hand going to her forehead as she fought to rid her mind of the memories. A feeling of being watched caused her eyes to spring open, and she saw several people peering at her curiously as they went about their business. She brushed a stray lock of hair out of her eyes and made sure to glare defiantly at them before starting her prowl again.

The past was gone, and all there was was Sperare. The four of them, along with Odin, had a bond that was unrivaled by anyone or anything; they trusted each other without question, and that was the key factor that elevated Sperare above all the other task forces. As long as they were together, there was nothing they could not do.

She glowered unconsciously as she rounded another corner, sending a young page scurrying away from her. So _why_ where they all turning on her? She had seen it in their eyes: a steely resolve that said they agreed with Odin's orders.

"Stupid, chauvinist morons!" She burst out, not caring who was listening. The only downside to being the only girl on the task force was that she acquired four very protective brothers, who seemed to find it greatly amusing to put her in a cage. For her own good, they said.

_She_ could kick all of their asses. They _needed_ her.

"My, I hope you're not including me in that." A soft feminine voice said amusingly.

Raven jerked her head up. Without realizing it, she had walked into the 'Net', a series of antechambers outside Leaders' offices. She turned toward the sound of the voice, an involuntary flush rising to her cheeks. "Hilde! I'm sorry, I was…thinking aloud." The older woman had obviously been leaving her husband's office as Raven was walking to Heero's.

Hilde Maxwell had the same laughing look in her eyes as her husband and son, but had an underlying no-nonsense way of going about things that set her apart from most women. She didn't at all look to be in her forties – her indigo-black hair didn't have a hint of gray.

Hilde, along with Lucrezia Noin, had been a surrogate mother to Raven after the Fall. Now, those all-seeing blue eyes sharpened on her in the way that only a mother's could.

"They must've done something dreadful this time," Hilde smiled. "But don't you worry about it."

Raven tensed. It wasn't like Hilde to just drop an issue like that. Usually, she would have insisted that they talk about it, then she would have helped Raven plan her revenge, usually in the form of a good prank. But she hadn't; that meant one thing: she knew about the orders. Which meant that they all knew. Raven's anger was dissipating; now, she just felt sick. "It's been awhile since you've been down to the MI building. We've got some really interesting stuff going on that I'm sure you'd love to see." Hilde worked in the Mechanical Intelligence Department, and she was always eager to talk about its projects.

Raven automatically soothed the anger from her face, but wasn't able to take the edge out of her voice. "I'm sorry, Hilde, but I'm short on time. Have you seen Leader Yuy?"

"No, I'm not sure where he is. Probably to the same place my husband has wandered off to." A vague, annoyed look crossed her face. It wasn't convincing enough. There was a reason that Hilde wasn't an actress.

Raven put on a false smile and reminded herself to be tolerant. This was Hilde's way of helping. "If I'm not mistaken, some of the Special Forces trainees are scheduled to have weapons combat practice today. Duo is probably with them in the Pyramid." _Which you already knew_, she added silently.

"Oh, you're right! Well, since both of our men are probably there, we might as well walk together. I'm not certain I remember the way." Hilde started to walk away, and Raven reluctantly followed, clenching her fists. They both knew that there was no way Heero would be in the Pyramid today, and they both knew that there was a snowball's chance in hell that she would _ever_ forget where the damned building was.

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Raven waved absently to Hilde as the older woman walked past her and out the doors of the Pyramid. Hilde had suddenly remembered 'something she had to do' the moment they arrived. The building was, actually, pyramid shaped, and was located on the north-eastern side of the grounds, among the many buildings of the defense department. It was huge, and served as the main gym for the Special Forces. Only the members of the elite defensive and offensive task forces could train there; all of the other, lower ranked officers used the common gym on the other side of the grounds. As a defining point towards the end of their training, the Pyramid was used to test the men applying for position on the Special Forces teams. Duo had taken it upon himself years ago to oversee all training himself. As the primary head of the Defense Department, he was involved closely with all of the task forces, and he wouldn't have it any other way. Anyone who suggested that he hire a supervisor to take over the small duties like training had mysteriously vanished.

As she walked into the large 'Ballroom' in the center of the building, forty pairs of eyes turned to her. Rather than worry about it, she ignored them. _Please, please don't make a scene_, she willed to the man in front of her.

Duo Maxwell stood in the middle of a training mat, twirling a long wooden quarterstaff between his fingers. He was tall, though not as tall as Lander, and bulkier. His long braid hung over his shoulder, untouched by age. Many years of laughter and even more years of hardship had lined his face, but it didn't make him look old. Just…enduring. Raven had no doubt that Duo would outlive them all.

Upon seeing his charges' attention no longer on him, he turned; when he saw her, his face brightened. "Ah, Ariel, just the person I was wishing for." He winked at her.

Awed whispers broke out amongst the group of trainees, most of whom were men an at least her age, if not older. She barely stifled a groan and wished fervently for a pair of sunglasses. _You did that on purpose, you evil, incorrigible man! _She thought furiously _He couldn't have kept things anonymous for once, could he_? This was _not_ doing much to help her mood. Being on Sperare had elevated all of their names – or, their call signs, rather, as no one knew their given names – to a sort of celebrity status. Workings of elite task forces was often published in the newspaper (very vague, condensed versions, naturally), and Sperare was a legend. All four of them expended all efforts to stay out of any sort of public eye and knowledge, even at the IC. Often, they would wear uniforms of lower ranked officers, or do any number of things to keep their faces nameless. Unfortunately, the fact that "no one had ever seen" the members of Sperare only added to their mystique. And it had been a long running debate among everyone whether 'Ariel' was a woman or a man. Most people thought it was a man, masquerading with a feminine call sign. Well, now these guys knew the truth. Of course, they probably wouldn't tell anyone. They had to be elite to be trying out for the Special Forces, which meant they were smart; they were also probably scared out of their mind to do something that would piss off the Leaders.

At the moment, though, she actually looked like herself. The chemists and artists in the Camouflage lab had taught all of them tiny things that could be done that would alter a person's appearance entirely. But she was supposed to be on vacation, and hadn't bothered with it. It had been refreshing to actually see her own face in the mirror for once. Of course, her dark, waist length hair was pulled up, and her long bangs needed a cut so badly that they covered her exotic, cerulean blue eyes. If that was even their color, today; they tended to change, and often. She couldn't begin to guess what her anger had done to their color. She shrugged subtly. It didn't matter if every one of the men in the training hall remembered every detail of her face; the likelihood that she would ever see them again looking the same was practically nil.

Duo was grinning at her rather devilishly, and she knew what he would ask before he spoke the words. "I've been needing someone to show these guys the right way to block with the 'staff. Spar with me?" He smiled cheekily and rocked back on his heels. "It'll only take a minute."

Raven barely muffled a curse and looked down at herself. The navy blazer and matching pencil skirt, white oxford shirt, panty hose, and three-inch matching pumps were _not_ exactly training garb. It was an understood rule that everyone who worked in the KIC was to dress respectably, though that rule really didn't apply to Sperare. She had come to work in cutoffs and t-shirts before. But she hadn't exactly packed a lot in her duffle today, and her choices were either this or her fencing garb. She chose this.

She smiled at him through clenched teeth. She could not disrespect him by refusing in front of his charges. As soon as she had a weapon she would knock that damn, mocking twinkle right out of his eyes. "It would be my pleasure, _Leader_ Maxwell." She shrugged out of her blazer and rolled up the sleeves of her shirt. He raised an eyebrow at her sheathed wrists. Raven unbuckled them and tossed them on her jacket. She left the thigh sheath alone; she wasn't about to lift her skirt in front of the whole class, and besides, the dagger probably wouldn't get in her way. And, if she was lucky, she might even get to use it. Spring it on Duo or something, just for kicks. _That_ would set them all to talking. He tossed her a quarterstaff. She snatched it angrily out of the air. She was spoiling for a good fightA jolt of adrenaline shot through her blood as she and Duo circled on the mat. It had been four years since she last held a quarterstaff, let alone used one. She briefly contemplated telling the trainees that the only use they would ever get out of the weapon was playing 'Little Bunny Foo Foo' and bopping each other on the head. She decided not to. Most of them probably wouldn't understand, anyway. She spun the quarterstaff both directions, testing it. The weight of it was completely balanced, and completely foreign in her hand.

Duo struck fast, but not at his best; he was going easy on her, she realized, as she reacquainted herself with the weapon. She closed her eyes and concentrated on _feeling_ his attack, matching him but not initiating any moves. As she fell into the easy tempo of strike-and-block, he increased his attack, but she followed him without a problem. As the fight became more close-contact, Duo started talking, for her ears alone.

"Great day, isn't it?"

She growled and increased her attack to match his. "Where is _Leader _Yuy? I am looking for him."

He looked at her carefully as he skillfully dodged and parried. "He was going to get in touch with some of his contacts to see what he could find out about the crashes. That was a few hours ago."

At the mention of that, her anger that had been dissipating with Duo's steady fire returned full force. She threw it into the fight, whirling her staff in a blurred circle to block his attack. It was several seconds before he studied her carefully and spoke again. How he could look like he was talking about the weather and effortlessly match her, she didn't know.

"You're mad because he's got you grounded, and you shouldn't be. First thing, he's the boss here. Second, your coordinator and teammates agree with him. Third, you know he's right."

She barred her teeth. "He – is – not – right!" She punctuated each word with a strike from her staff. Vaguely, she was aware of her hair coming loose from its coif and falling down her back, but she didn't care. "How could taking me away from my team be right! We just _don't work_ without each other, Duo, you know that."

Duo staggered under her assault, but managed to reply. "I know you're upset, but you have to stop thinking that this is all about _you_, angel. Look at the big picture instead. Did you ever stop and think that he was doing the team a _favor_ by keeping you here?"

She gasped and flinched as though she'd been struck. The beginnings of tears were like pinpricks in her eyes, but she angrily swallowed them down. Before he had time to block her, she snarled and struck with all the force she could muster and his quarterstaff went flying out of his hand. Before he had so much as turned towards it, she had her quarterstaff over the kill point at his throat. She didn't have to have a mirror to know that a wild, wounded fury blazed in her eyes. The both stood there, eyes locked, heaving with exertion. But her staff did not shake. Not that she would ever hurt him; but right now, she had him, even if she couldn't do anything with it.

"He's not trying to hold you back, Ariel. He's only trying to help them by keeping you here. It's been getting worse, you know that. God only knows what would happen if you saw that crash site. We need to be able to get some quality information from the debris, and they wouldn't be able to do that if something were to happen to you." His eyes were sincere, and he reached out and squeezed her shoulder comfortingly. He didn't know what was going on with her any more than she did. Her shoulder slumped defeatedly and she let her staff drop to her side. "If I were you, I wouldn't waste my time talking to Heero. I would be down in Doc Mac's lab, trying to figure out what's going on with me. The sooner you do that, the sooner everything can go back to normal."

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Helos were a relatively new technology, derived from helicopters, and Stars rather liked to travel by them. They were not only bigger and faster than their archaic forefathers, but they also were moderately inexpensive to operate and very difficult to strike down. The prototype they were in now, called the Scythe, also had the unique ability to run completely silent. That was always a plus when you didn't particularly want to be seen; and as a member of Sperare, you _always_ needed to be invisible. It was also sort of creepy, but as long as he wasn't the one on the wrong end of a Helo, it was all good.

Stars tried to concentrate on the blur that was scenery as the aircraft made its way toward the crash site. He wasn't piloting, though all of them could; Kale had decided to take the controls this time, and he had to admit he was grateful. He wanted to spend the forty minute ride brainstorming, though in the ten minutes since they left the IC headquarters he hadn't had much success.

The three of them were an excellent team. They were brothers in all but name, and got on brilliantly. As a task force, they were completely seamless, like one, single entity. But at the moment, each of them was so completely unsettled that it was…well, unsettling. Kale had automatically sat in the pilot seat when they had boarded the aircraft without so much as a word. That hardly ever happened. Usually, they had a mini rock-paper-scissors tournament to see who got to drive. Lander hadn't laughed once since the debriefing. When they boarded the Helo, he had immediately gone back and raided the stock of rations in the cargo bay; three Twinkies and a Pop Tart later, he had gone back to fetch more. He had spent the past five minutes trying to unsuccessfully open a bag of salt and vinegar potato chips. Lander's stomach was a bottomless pit, but never in a million years would he have eaten salt and vinegar chips. His hands were busy, but his eyes betrayed him. And as for Stars himself, he had always been able to do quick, thorough, and objective analysis to uncover aspects and angles of problems that no one had ever thought of before; it was one of the reasons he was the leader of Sperare. But today, despite the severity of the mission, the possible horrors of what the crashes could mean, he couldn't brainstorm at all, couldn't keep his mind focused for a single minute. None of them could concentrate, and he knew why. _Raven_.

They were all a family, a team, not to mention best friends, and Lander and Kale rightfully treated her as they would an incredibly close sister. But she was more than Stars' sister – she was his twin. They were a _part_ of each other; he knew her better than she knew herself, as she likewise knew him. And 'that freaky twin thing' was a connection that crossed distance and time, like a lifeline between them. Right now, that connection was like an itch he couldn't scratch. Wherever she was, she too was tense and uneasy and hurting. Beyond that, lately she had been hiding things from all of them. To Stars, it was as if the past was coming back to haunt him.

All of them had gone through the worst hell imaginable during the Fall; no one should ever have to watch the world crumble around them at such a young age. But to have your mother murdered and your home burn to the ground on the same day – your birthday, no less – was nothing short of _life shattering_. He had remained physically unscathed, but Raven had barely escaped death; and with the massacre that followed the Fall, it had been nearly a year before she'd fully recovered. And it was right after the Fall that it started happening.

As a child, she had always been the intuitive one, when it came to people. She knew when they were sad or angry, even if they tried to hide it. Then, as a teenager, she was able to discern emotion by touch or sight; a simple brush of the arm, and if the feeling was strong enough, she could sense it. He and Raven had had great fun with it. With her being able to read other people so well, and his ability to read _her_, they had quite the monopoly on manipulating people. But during the Fall, it all came crashing down.

Every person on the planet and beyond was consumed in unimaginable pain. None of the great terrorist attacks in history could hold a candle to the damage done in that one day across the globe. No person was left untouched from the clutches of grief, panic, and sorrow. In the thunderous war that followed, the world's heartache only intensified. It nearly killed Raven.

Her already fragile psyche was overpowered with the onslaught of emotion. Later, she had said that it was as if she felt all the world's pain and death at once. She thrashed and screamed and cried for weeks on end, caught in her own nightmare. They had been able to do nothing but watch her waste away. Like her body, her mind had barely survived. But she was the strongest person he knew, and somehow, she had fought her way through.

Raven's 'hyper-empathy' had increased tenfold from its paltry nature before the Fall, but as the years passed and she got used to it, it became more and more of a nonissue, just another part of her. She had become much more adept at sensing emotion, but otherwise claimed it to be completely dormant; now, she simply possessed a killer instinct and unrivaled intuition. In fact, her 'touch and know' abilities had been beyond helpful on more missions than he could count. But lately…

In the past few months, she was being affected by _something_. At first, she would gasp in pain and go rigid, saying that she felt a pulsing pain, like an energy of some sort; sometimes it was so strong that even they could feel it. She had also been seeing things, usually right after she touched someone's skin. And last week marked the fourth time in half as many weeks that she had blacked out.

He knew it was something to do with her…whatever it was. _Talent_, he thought. _Whatever in the hell you call it. _There was just a faint change in her right after _it_ happened. And though her blue eyes had the hazel quality of changing regularly, they had become so dark a cobalt after her black outs that he couldn't dismiss it as a mood change. Not to mention that she wasn't sleeping well – he could tell by subtle change in the way she held her posture, and the occasional look in her eye. Naturally, as her other half, only he could have noticed. He hadn't said anything to the others, though he was sure that Lander and Kale would figure it out soon.

And _he_ knew that Raven knew she wasn't fooling him.

_Because she knows what it is, _he seethed_. She knows, and she won't tell me. _Voicing the thought, even in his head, as much as confirmed it. Even if she didn't know for certain, he was almost positive that she had at least a general idea of what it was, which was more than he could say for the rest of them. It was behind her eyes when she looked at him – a pleading for forgiveness for not telling him what she knew. He glanced around the Helo at his other two companions. This was not only hurting her, it was hurting them. They just couldn't function right without her. She was their soul.

_Damn it all to hell_. He groaned and rested his head in his hands for a moment before taking a deep breath and sitting up. He couldn't let this throw their assignment.

"Merlin, pull up a topographical map of the target area. We don't want to call attention to ourselves by landing the Scythe in someone's backyard." Stars checked his watch; only five minutes to go. He got up and went to the cargo hold to ready anything they might need to take with them; it would probably be a thirty minute run from the Helo to the site, and they wouldn't have the luxury of going back and forth from the Dancer's remains.

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Doctor Laura Mackenzie's title was the Head of Psychology and Psychological Research, and considering all the emotional crap in the world, especially among task force members, it was one bitch of a job. When the branch of scientific research – the Cathedral – was started, she had overseen the psychological tests of every single elite task force member. Two years ago she had given up and had other doctors brought in to play shrink, while she 'concentrated exclusively on supervision.' She had moved her office out of the psychology building and into what used to be a small church on the outskirts of the Cathedral. Actually, it was the very building that the whole Cathedral had been named after all those years ago. She thought it was great fun that her office was the only one in the entire branch to come complete with its very own stained-glass windows.

In real life, she had dropped everything to become The Doctor for Sperare. Zechs had given her a raise. She said it was ten times harder and a hell of a lot scarier than her old job, even though her patient list had dropped from ten thousand to four. As their doctor, she not only took care of all their 'issues,' but also all their medical work. _And_ she was the chief (read: only) researcher for what she called 'Sperare-esque' things; aka all the things that would scare all the interns in the Intelligence Department shitless. After all, she hadn't graduated as valedictorian from MIT while-pursuing-three-majors for nothing. And yes, she was only thirty-two, thank you very much.

Now, Mac's lab was the single-most 'important' building in the Cathedral, and maybe even the entire KIC. Meaning it was the last building we ever wanted anyone from Fovuc to see the inside of. It was the only place on the planet that had actual records of Sperare. Therefore, the lab was a summit of national security. It was the only place that Sperare 'existed.' It was the place where all of the top secret, confidential stuff was started. So, thus, should there be a giant invasion of the KIC, it would be protected at all costs. Of course, the little church had been 'modified' to protect itself upon occupation: gates reinforced with adamantine and its very own security muse, among many, many other things.

But the chance that any wayward invader would ever suspect the building of being the cornerstone to Kanori defense was slim to none. It just didn't look very special. The two floors of the lab – the sanctuary and the balcony that overlooked it -- were alarmingly ordinary. The uppermost floor was like a loft, enclosed in glass; it had been converted into Mac's 'office.' On the bottom floor, the walls were smooth, gray stone. It was divided into different sections by various countertops and islands. All sorts of various 'projects' littered the surfaces of the counters, but all things considered, the room looked like you would expect a psychologist's lab to look like. Very neat and clean and tasteful and all that.

But today, Raven noted blandly, it was in an absolute uproar. Or, about as uproarious as it got around there. Her perch on the edge of Doc Mac's desk offered a perfect view of the room below. What looked like a metal, abstract version of a tree was shooting a dark brown fluid into a bowl on the table across from it. Above the din of a shrieking lava lamp, a blur could be heard rushing from table to table; that would be Simon, the doctor's wiry assistant. Another man, in his sixties with a halo of unruly white hair that made him look quite the eccentric scientist, was following Simon as fast as his legs could carry him, waving his hands in the air about something. That was the only other assistant, Henry. And Raven was fairly certain she had just heard a dog barking.

One of the few stipends Mac had issued when she had begun to work exclusively with Sperare was that she be allowed two 'secretaries.' Enter Henry Rowntree, top British scientist and inventor of more things than he could remember. Henry was seventy years young, and in a serious relationship with his work. If 'serious' was a word you could apply to him; it was a universal agreement that perhaps Henry had spent ten years too many in a lab without proper sunlight. And then, of course, was Simon Edison – yes, like Thomas Edison, only better. Simon was sixteen; when he was twelve, he had hacked into the mainframe of the KIC and replaced everyone's boring old screensaver with either a naked, dancing leprechaun, or a rabbit that flipped you off, depending on what department you were in. Instead of being punished, he was recruited. Now, he and Henry invented practically all the 'spy-stuff' that Sperare used on missions.

_I'd better go down there before someone gives themselves an aneurism, _she thought wryly. She made her way down the staircase and walked to the table where the two scientists stood, Henry still gesturing wildly. He was wearing some sort of magnifying glasses that took up his whole face. Both shoes were untied. In his hand, he had a beaker full of something that simmered. Einstein prodigy? Definitely. Raven managed to get right beside them before they took notice of her. Henry jumped like he'd been shot.

"Ariel! Lass, you scared the fire out of me!" Henry frowned and motioned towards the loft. "Blimey, _how_ in the light did you get up there without me awares, eh? And Simon as well! They've taught you too well, they have." He nudged Simon, who was blinking at her through his inch-thick glasses as if he had never seen her before.

Raven laughed delightfully. Along with the rest of Sperare, the three occupants of the lab were the only people she considered friends. Sneaking into the room had become a tradition for her, as a conversation between her and the two assistants rarely ever began without Henry's exclamation over her sudden appearance – most of which were never very sudden. She made a cursory glance around the ransacked-looking workstations. "Something interesting come through, Henry?"

If the man had been twenty years younger, she thought he would've squealed with glee. "Cor, yes. It has me and Simon absolutely knackered, not to mention the good doctor, but its revolutionary, Ariel. Positively _brill_." Simon bobbed his head eagerly at Henry's side and pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. "The Leaders gave us some new information – you'll have to come to the main strait away – it's smashing, really – amazing, and we never knew! – who'd have thought…I suspected it as codswallop at first, myself, but naturally it is not – it's the first real breakthrough we've had, and oh, the doctor believes it might have something to do with you! Imagine it all! It's blooming --"

It stopped just as quickly as it started. Laura Mackenzie stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips and one immaculate eyebrow raised. "I see Henry's not wasting any time telling this _top secret _information where _anyone_ could overhear." She smiled as she shook her head, and turned to Raven. "Good morning, Ariel. You don't look any worse for wear. Excellent. I would've thought you'd be lit up like a Christmas tree after this morning."

That was Mac. Always straight to the point. Raven smiled weakly, "You caught me too late. It's already been drained out of me."

"Ah. Well, you're here for a reason," she said briskly. "Let's get down to the basement, then, and I'll try my hand at pissing you off." She walked over to the back of the room, were a series of bookcases lined the wall. "Aubrey. Open the door." Aubrey was the security muse in the lab. Ask, and ye shall receive. The center bookcase slid soundlessly outward; a narrow staircase vanished into the darkness below it. "Power up the lights." The lights bloomed into a fine glow, beckoning them below.

Contrary to appearances and general knowledge, a third floor, a basement, lay below the church, accessible only by that one bookcase. Only three voices could get Aubrey to open the door – Mac's, Simon's, or Henry's. It was in the basement, or the 'main,' that the actual lab existed. The upper floors were a front, used mainly to display Henry and Simon's spare inventions or gadgets. Practically everything down below was classified top secret.

The room itself had always been one of Raven's favorite places. Instead of the smooth walls of the upper floors, the basement had rough stone pavers all the way around, as if it were built in another time. The air was always a little too cool, from the dampness of the earth around them, and the lighting was dim; Mac had never liked halogens, she said, and the low lighting was adequate enough. Most of the tables catty-cornered around were made of roughly cut, dark wood. All the chairs were comfortable, but not overly so. A huge, salt water aquarium made up one wall. There were piles of books, manuscripts, and file folders everywhere. And strangely enough, having the best of technology scattered in with all the archaic elements was somehow appropriate. The entire room was just so…alive. Raven went to the table closest to her and lifted a sheaf of papers off a pile of books, reading their titles. _A Quest into Alternate Universes.__ Investigating the Preternatural. Psychic or Psycho? A Book of Spiritual Power. The Fiber of the Universal Plane. _

Raven frowned. _What?_ She looked around the rest of the room, taking in all the discrepancies. The three glass screens that were usually retracted to the ceiling were not only down, but buzzing with activity. Each of them held map-like images, with different blinking lights and sectional scans running on two of the three. One held what looked like star charts. Across the room from the screens, a three dimensional globe was spinning in midair, complete with miniature space colonies and bases around it. Something was happening. Something big. She turned her attention to the other side of the room, where the three occupants of the lab had gone.

A second series of glass screens on the wall opposite the fish tank was scrolling a series of information – heartbeat, brainwaves, notes on the patient. She started to walk forward and froze. Those were her psych evaluations, all of them; every single test she'd done in the past two months. Her brain worked furiously. That was not unusual. She was one-fourth of the focus of the entire lab. Yeah, that was fine. Normal. Right.

"What am I thinking, Ariel?" Mac was looking at her in a strangely intense, eager, hungry way. It was almost creepy. No, it _was_ creepy.

Raven frowned. "What did you say?"

Mac walked over to her so they were mere inches apart. "Tell me what I'm thinking. Tell me why you're here. Look at me, and feel it, and tell me."

"Mac, what the hell is going on?"

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**Author's Note:**

Thanks **so much** to my **wonderful** reviewers: lulu, cool youkai, phe, golden ballet! You guys rock my face off.

And to answer lulu's question: Where are Winner, Barton, and Chang?

**A**: grin That's the fun part – everyone assumes that all the pilots' children would be on the same side in the war…I assure you, they do exist, and we'll be meeting them soon enough.

**read? REVIEW!**


	5. Part Four

**Author's Note: **So I did a little chapter moving…I added the Prologue, which should clear up a few things for everyone. And I didn't think it would be fair to tease you into thinking that I'd actually posted a new chapter…so I decided to post the next installment. Enjoy!

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Heero Yuy didn't bother to acknowledge Duo's presence as the man sauntered up next to him, joining him as he leaned against the catwalk that overlooked the equipment hangar. By now, Duo was so used to this unspoken greeting that he never expected anything else. He supposed that he and Heero would continue their silent camaraderie for as long as they lived; it was simply the way they worked. However, his usual introductory jest died on the tip of his tongue; today, it wouldn't be appreciated. _Well, no time like the present._ "Ariel knows."

_That_ made him look up. For anyone else, such a small gesture was equal to an outburst; despite the years, Heero Yuy was still showed as much emotion as a particularly stubborn wall. "How'd it go?" Casual, indifferent to any outside observer; but the fact that he even bothered to ask betrayed his feelings – concern, worry, anxiety. How funny that having children could turn even the coldest soldier into a human being. Well, sort of a human being.

"Um…good?" _Oh, Maxwell, you are such a _liarBut he smiled in a convincing way, even though it wouldn't do any good; not only did his 'convincing smile' look extremely shady, but the man next to him was like a freaking lie detector.

Heero sighed and his brows furrowed, though in a conspicuously nonchalant way. They were both alarmingly good at the whole nonchalant thing. "What cell is she in? Did they drug her?"

"Actually she never got there. Doc said she was only mad for about two minutes, because we kept it from all of them for so long."

"And the rest of it?"

Duo's careless shrug contradicted the worry in his eyes. "Doc said she took it all in stride. Expected it, almost. Doc says that's a weird way to react. She doesn't know if 'Rie can handle it."

"She can handle it," Heero said quickly, with easy confidence. _But he's not_, Duo thought. "Where is she?"

Duo sighed. "The Well." The Well – aka The Wishing Well. It was Sperare's room, the one they always went to for debriefing and conference and just a haven. The boys had made fun of the name at first, but it just stuck. What better namesake than the place where hope was born and wishes were cast? "If I know her, she's waiting for the group to get back from the crash site."

Heero nodded tritely, briefly turning his head to give Duo a cursory glance before turning back to the railing. "It'll be fine. If anything, this changes everything we've ever known. The research was conclusive, you know." For him, it was a speech.

Duo's eyes turned grim. "I know. But at what price, Heero? What price will _they_ pay?"

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Lander let his knees absorb the impact of his weight as he hopped from the open Helo door to land in an easy crouch. Rocking back on his heels, he silently scanned the empty field before them. His dusty brown hair thrashed in a wild windblown halo around his head as the aircraft's rotors beat quietly above him. Not breaking his steady scan, he lifted his hand and motioned behind him before moving away from the door. His mind absently registered a soft thump; the wind stopped, and another thump followed. Stars and Kale, leaving the Scythe and killing the engine. He let his eyes take in every inch of the open area one last time before straightening and turning to his companions. His voice was the barest of whispers, thrown to carry to only two other pairs of ears. "It's clear."

The heat sensors had shown as much, of course, but technology was known to have its faults. He pushed up the sleeves of his shirt; the air here was still, much different than the Core City. It was just barely too warm to be covered from head to toe in black. Reaching into one of the cargo pockets of his pants, he pulled out a pair of sunglasses and put them on; Kale and Stars did the same. Wordlessly, they turned away from the Helo and set off towards the crash site. Kale had put the Scythe down in a small clearing, surrounded by a thicket of trees. It was a necessary precaution.

A few minutes later, they emerged from the stand of pine trees and faced a rural blacktop road. Intel had said that it hadn't been used much since the Fall, and if the condition of the road was any indication, it hadn't been used at all. The group set off in a steady run, single file. They had landed several miles away from the crash site, a good thirty minutes on foot; well, thirty minutes on foot at their pace. Most people wouldn't be able to keep up at their steady clip. The steady weight of the pistols at his ankle, hip, and shoulder, and the knife on his thigh, was a comfort.

There was nothing but the road, and the fixed sound of their feet striking the pavement. Lander steeled himself for what was to come. They – he – had been on more missions than he could count, and seen more than he ever wanted. The emotional mask came easy now; in fact, he had to remind himself to take it off sometimes. But something was different about this case. Something was off, just like the wind was off and the shadows were off and the _road_ was off. It couldn't be explained, it just was. He followed his gut, and his gut was telling him there was something important in the air. And he was positive that it wasn't just the fact that they were missing a member. No, it was something out of place, something that didn't belong in the deserted Kentucky plains. An emotion of sorts, one that was thick in the air like some sort of gas, one that was different from all the others, that didn't fit at the solemn site of a plane crash.

The sight of a house jarred his train of thought from its tracks. It was deserted, its door swinging haphazardly on a broken hinge. A deflated basket ball was left alone on the porch; vines were almost upon it, reaching out with their controlling tendrils to claim it for their own. He had seen the house's like many times before. Actually, it was almost refreshing to see a home that wasn't just a crumbling chimney peeking through rubbish, or rafters, black with soot, jutting from ashes. Few had been spared in the raids after the Fall.

As they came around a curve in the road, he saw it -- the remains of the Kanori Wind Dancer, spread chaotically in what could have been an old cow pasture, surrounded by trees. The twisted metal and acrid smell gave the quiet serenity of the landscape a newfound harshness that wasn't particularly pleasant. A bird called from his left, breaking the silence. It was a few seconds before it hit him that that one lone sound had been the only bird he'd heard since landing. _Odd_, he thought. Most of the wildlife had long cleared out of areas near cities, and they wouldn't be caught dead anywhere in the proximity of the crash; surely the smell of smoke and death would keep any bird, no matter how sociable, away. The solemn note sounded again, and he frowned thoughtfully; damn if he didn't know that bird. It almost sounded like a…peacock! _Impossible.__ Peacocks don't nest in pine trees in --_

Kale summed it up for him in a quiet hiss. "Damn. We've been had." The look on his face said that he had recognized the exotic bird's call too.

Lander grinned ruefully. _I knew this was turning out to be way too easy. _He slid into the usual banter that occupied them on missions. "Well, take out my eyeballs and fry them in ginger. There might be some fun today after all."

Stars gave him an incomprehensible look that might have passed for dry amusement. "We are being watched," he intoned solemnly. His eyes scanned the surrounding terrain restlessly.

_Thank you, oh wise sage_.

Kale looked around irritably. "I hate peacocks," he said sullenly.

Lander snorted. "How can you hate peacocks? That's like…hating bottled water. It's a waste of hate, man. Besides, peacocks are pretty. You're just jealous."

"Jealous!" Kale sputtered. "Me, jealous of _that_ bird? A bird that is so ostentatiously tacky that it is chased and pelted with Cheetos by zoo-going children around the world?"

Lander nodded absently. "Blue isn't really your color."

"I look good in _every_ color –"

Stars cleared his throat impatiently. "Are you finished? This," he said flatly, "is _not_ getting anything accomplished."

Kale and Lander both gave each other 'I-dare-you' looks, then turned to survey the surroundings with their leader. The sun had opened from the clouds and was too bright, even through sunglasses. Lander shaded his eyes and looked across the field spread out in front of them. The remains of the plane was a good 200 yards away – and it was very obviously a plane. Instead of tiny littering pieces like he'd expected, there were huge chunks of metal; it looked like someone had sliced the Dancer in quarters.

He frowned thoughtfully. "Ares made it sound like there was hardly enough debris to fill a matchbox, but if you sewed that together," he gestured towards the scorched plane, "you could practically fly it. It's like a bunch of puzzle pieces. And not a hard one."

Stars nodded; his brow was creased in concentration. "Yeah, a puzzle for a little kid."

"A really stupid little kid," Kale added helpfully.

If Lander had turned any slower, he would have missed it. There, a flash of movement in the copse of trees behind what was left of the plane. He stilled, his eyes narrowing and his hand automatically going to the gun at his hip. A barely audible _click_ sounded beside him as Stars released the safety on his own weapon. The three of them had instinctively moved into a triangle, back to back, each poised to act on the slightest whim.

There had been _someone_ in those trees – there was no way that it could have been an animal, let alone a peacock, even if someone had been spoon-feeding the thing Miracle Grow for the past five years. A blanket of grim confirmation settled over him. That meant that there was more than one person out there; the bird call had to be some means of communication between whoever was out there, waiting for them.

Beside him, Kale was lazily watching the trees with all the aloofness of a panther that was pretending not to watch his prey. Stars was behind him, but Lander could _feel_ the strength emanating from him – the controlled acceptance of whatever they would soon face. He himself was spending half his attention on being annoyed that it was before noon on a Monday – a 'vacation' day, nonetheless – and half on trying to keep his stomach from growling, even as a fine rush of adrenaline sped through him.

A minute passed. Two. Stars spoke quietly, without lowering his gun. "Hide and seek, we're it." He didn't wait for their response. They all broke from each other, trotting on silent feet in opposite directions; Lander slinked across the field, toward the Wind Dancer and the trees behind it, not really caring that he was in open firing range.

When he got within thirty feet of the fallen plane, his steps faltered, slowing to a jerking walk. It was _cold_. He huffed, and saw his breath crystallize in front of him; hurriedly, he pulled his sleeves back down into place. Hadn't he just been thinking how hot it was? Why had the temperature dropped so suddenly? And it had been such a stark change. One moment, it was just a touch too hot, then the next step had made goose flesh rise on his arms. He stopped, and backed up ten steps. The change was instantaneous. He was back in the heat. It was like the remains of the plane and the air around it was incased in a bubble of cold. He stepped back in. It had to be twenty degrees cooler. Treading carefully, he started forward again, waiting for something to come jumping out at him.

_Boo_, he thought. Nope, nothing.

Lander took another step forward, then another. Frowning, he stopped and rubbed a hand across his eyes, blinking. It…it was _misting_. The sort of mist that comes just after a hard rain, the kind that is seen but not felt, like a haze over the eyes. Only it hadn't rained in the past six hours. Ten feet around the debris, and it was misting. _Hot damn.__ Water density, my ass_, he thought.

He reached in his pocket and retrieved out a small metal disk, about the size of a quarter. A plastic tab stuck out of its side. He pulled it. The disk gave a small vibration; it was on. He held it in his palm as he closed the distance to the debris; he walked a full circle around what was left of the plane, then re-pocketed the disk. It would've recorded everything from air pressure to pH values, and transmitted them back to the KIC. He turned back to the Wind Dancer. The seams where it had been ripped apart were not ragged…they were strait. And they dripped with water. He peered into the shell of the plane. It looked untouched. Straight off the assembly line. There was no trace of human life. And the seats were dark – with water stains. He fumbled with his sunglasses; they could take pictures.

After taking several pictures of the plane, he set off again for the trees beyond it. About thirty feet past the plane, the air suddenly became hot again. He didn't flinch this time, only push his sleeves – which were now damp – back up. Water dripped from his hair. He shook it out, and kept walking until he reached the trees, and slipped among them.

It was like stepping into another world. The trees were thick, and he was immediately immersed into a hazy half-light, as if he had stepped into a room lit by the glow from under a cupboard door. The wind ruffled the branches around him, and the light shattered into pinpricks and the world became a whirling kaleidoscope of green and gold. The loud silence that can only be found among ancient trees flowed around him, through him. The forest was like a river around him, adapting itself to his presence, molding to his every nuance. A cluster of dead leaves danced at his boots, calling his feet to play, and the sound was loud. He knew right away, with the certainty of a predator, that there was no one else in the wood. It was a skill earned with instinct, honed on rough city streets. He couldn't explain it, even to himself. Especially to himself. He just knew, without a doubt, that he was the only disturber to these woods. At least at the moment. Now, whether someone had been here, and how long ago, was something he could find out. He wasn't known for his tracking abilities, at least not in this environment. The trees just didn't speak to him like the city did. Give him a crowded metropolis any day. Finding needles in those types of haystacks were his forte. But here, in the open…well, he wasn't a woodsman by any means. Stars and Raven, especially, were the best at tracking through forests. But still, skill was skill, right? If someone had been here recently, he would find out. Cold hard evidence, that's the ticket.

Lander set off at a slow pace, letting the dense foliage bend around him, moving carefully, straining all of his senses. After about five seconds, he started to feel very much like Elmur Fudd, hunting That Damn Rabbit. This was strangely unsettling. He had always liked to play Bugs Bunny. The fact that Elmur Fudd never won wasn't lost on him.

Something glinted through the trees, and he froze, for the hundredth time that day. His muscles were probably going to hurt like hell tomorrow from seizing so much. The wind ruffled his hair, and the glint came again; without a second thought, he moved towards it.

It was a…space. A large tree grew in a space, with no brush or anything but grass around it for a few feet. It was a huge difference between the thick claustrophobia of the rest of the wood, even though the small 'clearing' was barely big enough for him to stand in. The sun still came in that dim sort of half-light, blocked by the branches of the huge oak tree. The light breeze shifted those branches, and a ray of sun illuminated part of the tree; suddenly, light was reflected all around him. When the branches shifted back, the light stopped. A tiny glass vial hung from a satin ribbon on one of the low branches; every time the sun had hit it, the light had refracted. Lander reached toward it, cradling it in his palm. The glass was dark blue, but it was almost completely covered by an old silver clasp. Engraved on the clasp was a wolf. It was a spirit bottle.

He stepped back and made sure to take pictures of it from all angles, then he reached up and slid the ribbon off the branch and placed the bottle in his pocket. He had a feeling that he had found all he was going to find, but he continued on until he reached the end of the wood, then doubled back to find Stars and Kale.

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When the boys trudged tiredly into the Well four hours later, Raven was still waiting for them. She leapt for the door the moment she felt them turn down the hall. It took a lot of willpower to stand and wait the nine seconds it took for them to reach the door, and the time it took for the security scan to let them in seemed like an eternity, even though it was instantaneous. As soon as the door opened, she was there; Stars took half a step into the room before she stopped him, reaching up and cupping his face in her hands, drawing his eyes into her wide and searching ones.

"What's wrong? I had this feeling…"

He grimaced and rolled his shoulders. "Sorry. I'm just restless, that's all."

For a moment, both pairs of eyes, so alike, yet so different, held fast as Raven and Stars spoke in a way that only twins could. She watched him take in her face; the sadness, the anger at him and everybody, the sickness the anger had caused, the shock of meeting with Mac, and finally the complete, encompassing worry for him and Lander and Kale. She saw questions in his eyes, confusion, and a quiet pleading, a want of understanding. He couldn't understand her any more, and it scared him.

A throat cleared behind them. "As…interesting… as this sibling reunion is, it would be peachy if you could move out of the doorway. We look like dumb sidekicks, standing out in the hall like this." Lander didn't sound irritated. Only tired.

Without a pause, Stars reached up and gripped her forearms, picking her up and backing her into the room. When he set her down, he leaned forward slightly so that their noses almost touched. "Its _nothing_," he said softly, emphatically. Her eyes widened briefly in comprehension, and she released him just as quickly as she'd run to him. She immediately turned to her two other teammates, giving them each similar searching glances, inspecting for injury and injustice.

Kale sighed dramatically, dry amusement playing on his face. He walked to her, grabbing a lock of her mahogany hair between his long fingers and giving it a mild tug. "Relax, cousin. We're fine." He spread his hands, an easy, confident smirk tugging on his mouth. "See? Perfect."

She cleared her throat to hide her smile, and again let her eyes fall on each of her 'brothers,' coming back to rest on the one in front of her. Only Kale could make you think that he had woken up this morning and purposely rolled in dirt for stylish reasons. If he had been born ugly, he'd probably have a much more bearable personality. His shoulder-length hair had been pulled back, showing off his strong, clean face. The dirt smudged across his face didn't do anything to keep him from being almost too striking to look at. The dark, knowing looking in his ice blue eyes said he knew exactly what she was thinking. Despite the war, he still remained a Peacecraft, a prince, and he would never forget it. Or let you forget it.

Her eyes moved to Stars. Technically, he was just as much of a blue-blood as Kale. But where Kale was smooth, arrogant grace, disdainful smirks and designer clothes, Stars was just Stars. He was easy indifference, casual strength, jeans and cashmere. Yet, the sheer presence of him would cause heads to turn in a room. He was the man that people looked to for leadership. He didn't try; it just came naturally. And, not to mention, Stars was almost the spitting image of their father. At 6'2", he was an inch taller, and broader-shouldered. But he had the same high cheekbones, the strong jaw-line, the utterly masculine face. The straight, patrician nose and elegant mouth came from their mother's side. But those eyes – those blue, blue eyes -- were all Heero. He had shadowy, feathery eyelashes that were long enough to make any woman green with envy. His dark, mahogany hair was just too long, always falling into his eyes, and nearly brushing his collar in the back. It wasn't a fashion statement like Kale's; he just hadn't gotten around to cutting it.

And Lander – he was less than an inch taller than Stars, making him a good two inches shorter than Kale. He wasn't breath-taking, or heart-stopping, but he was handsome, in a careless sort of boy-next-door way. His honey-brown hair was dandelion-soft, and when the sun hit his skin, he looked like a bronzed sun-prince. His face had his mother's delicate boning combined with his father's depth. Violet eyes peeked out from under sandy lashes; he could do the best 'innocent' look she'd ever seen. But only when he tried; usually, those eyes were playful-if-not-naughty, like he was laughing at a joke that only he heard. He had a roguish grin that rivaled his father's.

Sometimes, it was hard to forget just how handsome the three of them were, Raven thought wryly. Especially with Kale reminding her all the time. Even if they were about as similar as three completely dissimilar things in a pod.

She suddenly wrinkled her nose. "You all smell rather…uh, shady."

Lander grinned. Stars ducked his head. Kale blinked, then laughed. "Yeah, I suppose we do." He looked extremely satisfied.

"I guess we should change first," Stars looked a little sheepish. They turned and filed into a connecting room. Raven sat down cross-legged in one of the black leather recliners in the room. Ten minutes later, the boys filed out again, complete with shower-damp hair and clean clothes; they took seats around each other.

It seemed like it was taking forever. Raven was going to go crazy before they all got settled.

"Raven, you're twitching." Stars was staring at her.

Kale nodded. "You look like a neurotic deer." He motioned to her hands, which were shaking, and frowned. "Stop that."

Then, the door opened. Raven let out a relieved breath. Saved by the coordinator. Odin swept in, carrying a tray; he set it on the table and grinned proudly. "Just call me tea and crumpet man."

"Tea and Crumpet Man," Kale said, with malignant glee.

Lander's stomach growled loud enough for her to hear. They were used to this. "I'd rather call you beer and pizza man, but this works." He reached for the tray and came back with both hands full of cookies. "Thanks."

"I'll call you anything you want if," Stars said, "you can figure out this whole Wind Dancer mess."

"Anything?" Odin grinned. He looked at Kale, "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"That we dress him in red gingham and make him swim in a pool of treacle while he calls you Doctor Bigshorts?"

Stars laughed. "You mean like the time we made you stand in your boxers in front of the Pyramid with a sign that said 'I've lost that loving feeling'?"

"Only in your dreams, Dante."

Stars frowned thoughtfully. "Was it cold that day?"

Kale choked back a laugh. "Sod off, you blundering --"

Raven had been laughing silently for awhile now. She felt positively giddy. It was normal for them to exchange banter, even in bad situations. If you let everything get to you, you wouldn't survive. But for some reason, today it seemed outrageously silly. Maybe because she had spent the last four hours discussing the Apocalypse. She clasped both hands over her mouth, trying to hold it in, but she couldn't. Finally, she burst out laughing; her eyes were wild. She was going to hyperventilate, she knew it.

All four of them were staring at her in open concern. Kale reached out to touch her, but she jerked away from him twisting out of her chair. "Don't touch me." His eyes narrowed and his face froze over into acidic blankness. She shivered, but not because of him. "Have you ever had the feeling that things were beginning to... unravel? Something eating away at the fabric of the world, a curious feeling that something is wrong somewhere? And things are getting worse."

Lander looked mildly philosophical. "I completely agree. Sometimes I think the world has gone completely mad. Then I think, 'Awe, who cares?' Then I think, 'Hey, what's for supper?'

Odin stood next to him; none of them had taken their eyes off her. "Do try to suppress the urge not to be a _blithering idiot_, Lander." He turned to Stars. "She's been with Doc Mac all afternoon."

Stars had stood; he made no move toward her, but the pain was clear in his eyes. "Raven…"

She laughed again. _Boys_. "You don't have to talk over me, Odin. I'm _right here_," she spat. "So, did you know?"

Odin's face went completely blank. Her stomach clenched, and she almost retched. She had hoped it wasn't as she'd though, but of course, it was. He had known.

Stars looked defensive, angry. "What's this about?"

All the laughter in her died. It wasn't funny anymore. It never had been. She sank to the floor, and waited for them to set back down. The prominent look on the faces around her was confused, maybe a little curious. "I'm an Empowered, that's what."

"And? What the hell does that mean?" Lander shrugged.

Kale snorted. "It means she's going to swell like a pumpkin and eat us for breakfast tomorrow," he said with bitter sarcasm. "It doesn't mean anything. All it does is give whatever's wrong with her a fancy name."

"That's right," Raven said scathingly. "Because I'm _defective_."

His eyebrows furrowed, and he frowned. "I didn't mean—"

She sighed. "Oh, can it, all of you." She felt like someone had kicked her repeatedly with a steel-toed boot.

"Our fathers," she began, "—and our coordinator—have been keeping secrets."

Odin opened his mouth, but she stopped him with her hand, and sighed. Blaming people wouldn't help with anything. God, she was tired.

"Twenty years ago, before the Fall, back when all that time-travel hype was going on, all of those scientists and astronauts and others started trying to manipulate space-time continuum…even though they worked on it for years, no one ever succeeded."

Lander nodded. "Because wormholes and gateways cannot support human life."

She nodded. "Right. But as it turns out, according to Mac, one group got a little more than they bargained for…one of the smaller, less well-known researching groups, made up of mostly physicists, found a method of atomic 'drawing,' that could cut away at the molecules of the physical plane. They thought they could change the atomic structure of a section of the plane to accommodate time-travel…but they didn't. Anyway, to make a long story short, they created a rip in the Universal Plane. That was sixteen years ago." She frowned and shook her head. "That's unreal. It's so impossible. But they did."

Kale was looking at her carefully. "And what does that mean?"

Odin answered, raking his fingers through his hair. "It means," he sighed, "that they made a multi-planar hole. Think of it as layers; they tore a hole in the thick, first layer, and now you can see the other layers underneath. We think it's only one other layer though, for now."

Kale waved his hand impatiently. "No, I mean, what does it mean? Who cares about a little rip in the fabric of consciousness if it doesn't do anything?"

"That's what the Leaders thought…they'd known about it since it first happened, of course, them and a few others who were world leaders at the time. But tests were run and it was found to be completely…dormant. But as of late, things have been going…strangely. There is a satellite in space that was put up strictly to monitor that Rip…apparently, everyone had practically forgotten about it until it started to…pulse a few months ago. They told me, and Mac, about it three weeks ago. She's been up to her ears doing research and analysis and all sorts of tests."

"At the risk of sounding moronically repetitive," Kale said, "what does that mean, exactly? And what does it have to do with Raven?"

"Mac identified a…link between me, the satellite, and the Rip…she thinks I've been the one causing it to pulse. She also thinks that it's just beginning. Oh, and that I'm definitely not the only one who's been affected. There's a chance that there could be people out there with all sorts of abilities."

Stars looked a little desperate. "You mean like, 'Hello my name is Frank and I have x-ray vision?'"

She nodded. "Something like that. But she did say that she hasn't been able to find much evidence of anything, and that everything is probably in the very early stages of development. The likelihood that someone out there is living like Batman is…not very good." she finished weakly.

Lander was quiet. "What about ripping a plane apart with water?"

Everyone turned and stared at him. He got up and went to the table, pressing a button and bringing out a video screen. He fished in his pocket and brought out a transmitter disc, and slid it into place. "I sent the information and the pictures back to this receiver, so it should be here. I fiddled with the control pad on the table top. "Come on, you obnoxious little piece of scrap metal, _work_…ah. There we go."

The screen flooded to life as numbers began to scroll and pictures began to fill the screen. Pictures of the crashed plane. The ragged, gaping pieces. The cleanness, the emptiness of the interior. In one, a single water droplet was poised to fall from an armrest. The numbers were worse, in the way things are when they are touched with the dawning, horrible comprehension of truth. There had been water everywhere – pure water. It wasn't overly acidic or anything; no extras that would slice a plane into pieces. Lander told them of the mist, and the temperature change. The numbers confirmed it.

No one really said anything. It was all weird, too weird, and too fast. Water couldn't have done that.

Then, the pictures changed to a bottle, hanging in a tree. Stars sat up straight. "Where did you get that?"

The look on Lander's face said he thought about saying something really sarcastic, but thought better of it. "It was hanging in the trees behind the Dancer."

Stars stood and felt in his pocket, then extracted an identical small bottle, with one change: the bottle in the picture had a wolf on it; Stars' had a dragon. Lander looked at him, then reached in his own pocket and pulled out the wolf-bottle. They blinked at each other. "It was in the woods I looked in." They both turned to Kale.

He shrugged. "As much fun it would be to say 'me too,' I didn't find one. Which means there were only those two."

Raven frowned, and peered at the bottles. "That's odd, I didn't think anyone still believed in Spirit Bottles. And look, those bottles are old, but the strings look new…someone's been using them."

"What's a spirit bottle?" Odin asked.

"Spirit Bottles," Stars said, "were worn a long time ago – the ancient times, probably – as protective talismans. They were said to ward of evil spirits, or sometimes even held a spirit of their own that belonged to the owner."

Kale was looking at the bottles curiously. "Does anyone else find it rather odd that the dragon and the wolf on the bottles look suspiciously like two other dragons and wolves we know?"

No one had to ask him to explain. There were four symbols in the Killer Angels, each representing a different rank. Pegasus, Dragon, Griffin, and Wolf. The highest was Pegasus, but just the Wolves were enough to give you nightmares for several years. There was no way that any of the Killer Angels had been there, at the plane crash. They weren't a very secret group; any movement by even a few of them would have alerted the moles that Kanor had amongst them. Especially the movement of a Dragon. There was no way. And yet, here were these…spirit bottles, that had been hung in trees where they would be found…found by Sperare.

"I don't want to jump the gun, so to speak," Odin said slowly, "But I would get ready to go to Fovuc."

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**End Notes**:

Okay, that's part one of chapter one. Forty-one pages on my word processor. Part two is about three quarters of the way finished – I've got about 35 pages done so far. Since I'm posting in installments, however, ya'll should get the first taste of part two _very_ soon.

Next time we'll go into Fovuc's point-of-view and meet a few Very Interesting People. Yippy-chi-yay. Go to my author bio for a cookie.

Credits:

"Want to race back to the station, Sparky" is from the _Top 100 Things You Never Say to a Cop_. So is "Back off, Barney, I've got a piece."

"…compared to five minutes with me and this pencil" – _Blackadder_

"Have you ever had the feeling…." – _Strange_

**_Read? REVIEW!_**


	6. Part Five

**Author's Note: **Here we go…the second part of Chapter One. Be prepared for some culture shock ; Enjoy, darlings.

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He stood on the rail of the glass bridge, a silent silhouette in the early morning twilight. The city below him was quiet, shrouded in a cool, misty fog whose fingers seemed to extend from his lone figure to creep stealthily down the empty streets. The many buildings were cast in deep shadows, their edges barely illuminated with a blue-green promise of the coming dawn. And the Hunter took a deep breath, inhaling the life of the waking city. His burning gaze swept over his vast kingdom: Glastadt, the Shining City.

Even in the highlighted darkness, the city was magnificent. Shops and markets and town houses and inns lined every street; there was not an ugly building among them. Occasionally, a mansion or an old office building rose above the others. The glow of the street lamps did nothing to reprieve the darkness; rather, they only illuminated the thick, rolling fog, making it a neon blanket that covered all but the very tops of the buildings. At the far end of the city, the Chancellor's Glass Palace rose above the fog and into the clouds, towering over Glastadt as a venerable stairway to heaven.

Chancellor Istvan Khan was sometimes called The Bringer of Beauty. It was true. There was no evidence that this great Glass City used to be the ruined metropolis of Berlin, Germany. But perhaps the greatest aspect of Glastadt was that it was not all shiny, modern curves. Most of the architectural lines, however new they were, had roots in the 17th century, from the great Romantic statues to the ornamental ironwork. And it was constantly under construction, whether it be a fountain or a theatre, and had been growing since it was first declared the capital of Fovuc. A great wall encircled the entire city, from the palace to the bridge on which the Hunter now stood. Glastadt was a fortress, a beautiful, beautiful fortress, torn from the pages of lore and legend; and yet, it still managed to be the perfect playground to the many social elite that paraded its venues. Soon, the sun would call its many peoples out to play, and the quiet of the dark would be broken. But he was no fool; light was not always good, and night was not always evil.

His thoughts dwelled on things he was not supposed to know. His return from business in Japan had been unexpected, his plans having been upset by urgent messages, whispers in the dark. It had been a late night. It would be a long day. He needed answers, and he had very little time to find them. The weight of his knowledge pressed urgently against the city walls. Soon, the dam of revelation would break upon the city. Secrets never stayed secret for long. His gaze turned as the sun started to crest behind him, throwing the city into sharper relief. He easily found what he sought – the great structure, equally imposing as the Glass Palace, its shadow dominating half of the city. It was a castle that stretched out and rose up, an ancient, sleeping giant. It was called the Hold. And it was the home of the Killer Angels.

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She was up to her knees in water, in a shadowy place that had no discernible boundaries. In front of her, something was heaped up on a shallow sort of sandbar. A wind swept through the place, and she shivered; looking down, she saw that she was dressed in only a flimsy nightgown, with a white top and full red skirts. She sloshed forward towards the heap, and a faint feeling of surprise fluttered across her mind, because it was very hard to move through the water, harder than it ever had been before.

As she slowly made her way to the heap, a sharp, metallic smell assailed her, the smell of sweet copper pennies. A very, very familiar smell. She froze. And she knew, suddenly, without a doubt, in the horrible clarity that comes with truth, that the heap was a body; and she was wading in a river of blood, blood that had stained her once pure gown with its greedy hands.

And then she realized that the blood was hers.

The chilly wind swept her hair back and danced over her skin and she shrugged it away –

Catriona Winner's heart slammed into her chest as she flew from her nightmare back into her bed. There was a single moment of disorientation, of separating dream from reality, and then a total awareness of everything around her. The dream was still clear in her mind, as vivid as a true memory; they were all like that. But now, the vision was taking the back seat, pushed away by something else. An urgency sang through her, a fine prickling over her skin that was almost identical to the chilly wind in her dream. Her internal warning system had woken her from her dream world; a threat was lurking close, and her every molecule was screaming for attention, that the threat was not yet gone. On instinct, she had kept her eyes closed, her body still when she was first jerked awake, and as she lay among the soft goose-down pillows, she spared a grateful thought to those oh-so finely honed instincts. Even in sleep, her subconscious knew the feel of her room, _her_ space, and could tell when something was out of place. Now, with her full attention honed on the air around her, she knew why the feeling of wrongness had been strong enough to wake her. There was an intruder in her chambers, not yet to her room, but almost.

The silence around her was deafening as she strained to hear, strained to sense, to get an advantage on whoever thought to disturb her slumber. If only her heart would stop thudding in her ears. There, the slightest shuffle, like clothes rustling. He was right outside of her open door.

She kept her breathing deep and measured, and noiselessly snaked an arm underneath one of her pillows; her hand touched the cool metal of a gun, and she gripped it familiarly. It was a Beretta, nickel plated, and loaded with high-impact lead bullets. Not the most damaging, but a bullet hole is a bullet hole when you're aiming at something vital. Besides, she didn't like using too strong ammunition in her rooms. Blowing holes in the walls tended to make the 'landlord' angry, and it always took a while to get them patched up. The last time she'd shot up the walls it had cost half a fortune to repair. And, besides that, she preferred keeping it neat. No need to splatter whoever it was all over those nice, newly-patched walls. Hiring someone to clean blood and other things from thousand-year-old stone wasn't cheap either.

Whoever It Was stood right outside her door, and had moved too quietly for her to assess their footsteps and identify them. If you were good enough, you could tell who people were by the sound of their footfalls, and she was pretty good. Judging by the barely-there haze through her eyelids, the sun wasn't quite up yet, but it was nearing dawn. So when she opened her eyes, there would be enough light to see, but she shouldn't have to wait for her sight to adjust. Excellent. Someone was in _her_ room, and woke her up, and she was _tired_, damn it. Oh, she would enjoy this. She tightened her grip on the 9mm in her palm, and felt a sure, empty coolness spread from that hand all the way to her toes. If her eyes were open, she knew that they would be empty. Nothing like starting the morning as a sociopath; usually, she worked up to that as the day went on, like light fading from a sky. Her grip on the Beretta was steady; it was just like another finger, another part of her. She was ready to kill and maim.

The moment she heard his weight start to shift to take the first step into her bedroom, she was up, eyes open, gun pointing calmly and accurately across the room, even with his heart. Her hand barely shook at all.

The man already had his hands up in surrender, foot stopped in midair. They stared at each other for a good five seconds, cold green eyes blinking at warm, rich brown ones. He broke the silence first.

"If you're going to shoot me, Cat, I'd really appreciate it if you went ahead and got on with it. The suspense is killing me."

If it had been a little darker in the room, the suspense wouldn't have been the only thing that killed him. People who threatened her, in any way, tended to get dead, by principle; better them than her. She glared at him for a little longer, then clicked the safety back on her gun and lowered it.

"What the hell are you doing in my room, Athens?" she left her irritation heavy in her tone. The words weren't a statement, and they carried a strong threat. No one just walked into her chambers. Of course, she should have known immediately that it was him; first, he was the only guy who would come into her rooms uninvited, the only guy confident enough that he would make it out alive. Second, if it had been anyone else, she would have known it a lot sooner, not just as he was about to walk through her doorway. But Athens was not the least bit hostile, towards her anyway; and he was familiar, so she hadn't reacted as if he were a threat until he was upon her. Stupid, stupid girl. That was the way you got yourself killed. What if it had been someone else? Too many people wanted her dead.

Athens relaxed against the doorjamb, or pretended to, and started to smile; it turned into a grimace that didn't hide the fact that something was troubling him. "Just get dressed."

She raised an eyebrow at him, but jerked back the covers and swung her bare legs over the edge of the bed. Just who was the boss of whom here? The last time she checked, it was _her_, Cat, who was the Pegasus, and _he_ who was her Dragon. She muttered grumpily, but stifled any open complaints. It was too extraordinary for such mundane, everyday sentiments. Even if he was her best friend, her partner, he had come to her room at the crack of dawn, risking death and all sorts of other injuries to wake her. Okay, so she probably wouldn't have killed him; shot him, now, that was another story.

Cat stood up, fully aware that she was only wearing an oversized t-shirt and panties, but not caring. It was her room, damn it. She was not about to be inconvenienced in her own bedroom. He'd seen the whole show before anyway.

He cleared his throat and chuckled in a quiet, amused way; it started to touch his eyes, but faded away very quickly.. "I'll wait outside," he said, and turned into the antechamber. "Oh, and Cat," he paused over his shoulder, "_hurry_."

She snarled and threw a pillow at his head, and he laughed good-naturedly as he closed the door just in time to avoid what she suspected would have been a very messy decapitation. Pity.

She had an overwhelming, juvenile urge to take her time getting ready, but she managed to push it back. Instead, after washing her face and brushing her teeth, she dressed quickly in whatever she could find, not stopping to survey herself in the mirror. She quickly pulled her platinum blonde hair back into a high ponytail, tugging her fingers through the tangles, and walked towards the door.

Her apartments in the Angel Hold were nothing short of regal. As the only girl in the entire Killer Angels, Cat had a whole wing of the castle to herself. Though it was all hers, she had claimed only a small portion, one of the more moderate chambers, for all the good it did; her rooms included a large foyer, a living room, a large kitchen, two bedrooms – each with its own antechamber -- two and a half baths, a game room, and a small library-office. Her wing had been part of the original structure, built in the late 18th century, and had been used to house royal guests. She loved it immensely.

Stepping into the antechamber, her eyes went to Athens, and she was glad that she hadn't taken her time. Athens looked downright weary, the kind of fatigue that comes from a combination of a lot of physical and emotional stress in a short period of time. He was young, only twenty, two years her senior. But he seemed older. Not in his sculpted, unlined face, or his tall, athletic build, but in his eyes. They were ringed in brown, starting with dark chocolate on the outside, then moving to a light maple; finally, a rich amber ringed the black of his pupils. They were eyes that knew too much. But they were kind eyes. All in all, he was one of the most unique looking people she had ever seen. His hair was blood red, the kind that natural red-heads just didn't have; indeed, he lacked the other typical characteristics for red-heads too. His skin wasn't fair, and it didn't have freckles. Rather, it was tan, almost olive toned. And those three-ringed eyes. He had talked before about an unusual mix of Scottish, Irish, and Welsh heritage. But still, his was the kind of face that people just weren't born with, like his mother had made a deal with some otherworldly thing and gotten him out of it. On Athens, though, it didn't look unnatural or fake, because it wasn't. Just another oddity in her life. As if she needed any more than she already had.

Cat didn't stop to talk to him; instead, she kept walking, knowing he would follow. She needed sustenance before she could start to think. The sun hadn't even come up yet, for God's sake. They were both silent as she rummaged around her kitchen for a few minutes, and he sat watching her on a bar stool. He was one of those people who didn't have to have the constant noise of conversation, and so was she. Usually, their silences were comfortable ones, but today, an undercurrent of something else made the quiet of her kitchen almost unbearable. When she had sliced some fruit for herself and tossed him a bagel, he finally spoke.

"Bastiaan was cancelled yesterday."

She froze. A detached sensation flooded her senses, stilling any thoughts running through her head. The last thing she heard was the sound of the knife falling to the floor. All noise had stopped; the world was a blur.

The silence was deafening, almost painfully so, and it pressed against her ears as if she were deep underwater. Static buzzed across her vision, and her mouth went dry, and it was like she couldn't tell upside down from rightside up, and for a minute, she couldn't breathe.

_I am going to faint_, she thought. _No, I don't faint._ The ground lurched._ I'm going to faint._ Vaguely, she felt her hands clutching the edge of the countertop on their own volition, trying to grasp onto something, anything solid.

Finally, the world righted itself with a sickening sway. Slowly, her senses began to return to her, starting with sound. A loud pounding echoed through her head and through the room and seemed to reverberate through the cold stone of the castle walls and the furniture seemed to hum with it. Cat realized that it was her heart pounding; and then she realized that she could think again, and her thoughts spun. She tasted panic in the back of her throat as the implications of those four words echoed in her mind. One word in particular.

_Cancelled_. Bastiaan had been _cancelled_. In Angel-speak, it meant that he had been terminated. Killed. Destroyed. _Cancelled_. More specifically, it meant that he had been killed on purpose; not murdered, not any sort of accidental death. No, his death had been ordered. And there was only one way to get cancelled, one broad, all encompassing way.

Treason. In some way or form, betraying Fovuc. People got cancelled when they became a liability, when they became compromising to the nation. Usually, being cancelled was associated with defection – going over to Kanor, or wanting to leave Fovuc. Same thing. But never, never, had an Angel been cancelled, let alone a Pegasus. _The_ Pegasus.

Bastiaan had been her guide of sorts when she had first become a Killer Angel. They were too different and he was too aloof for them to be close, but Cat had considered him a friend, as in close acquaintance. More than that, he was an ally, one of few.

Athens wore sympathy and understanding like a cloak, and she let him comfort her as he walked around the bar and enveloped her in his soothing embrace. Cat rested her cheek on his chest and took a deep breath, taking in the strength he offered before pulling away from him. She didn't have time to grieve; things would be happening, terrible repercussions would already be set in motion. Bastiaan was a Pegasus. Though they all were equal in rank, he had been the oldest, the strongest, the figurehead. The King. This couldn't be happening. It was impossible. Things like this didn't happen. _But it _is_ happening,_ the pesky voice in the back of her mind reminded her. _You knew it could._

She clenched her fists. "When?"

"Yesterday evening. Somewhere in Tokyo." Athens sighed heavily, reading the questions in her eyes. "No one else knows yet, but you can bet that if I know, then rumors will start flying before high noon. And after the rumors will come the reality."

He didn't have to elaborate. Bad Things were coming. _Be practical, Cat, always practical. One problem at a time, that's the only way._ She pushed any worries out of her mind, and concentrated on what she knew.

Bastiaan would rather die than betray Fovuc, of that she was certain. _Well_, she thought dryly, _now he won't have the option._ A pang of sadness tightened her heart, and she pushed that aside too.

As a Pegasus, Bastiaan was guaranteed a trial should any indiscretion arise against him. But he hadn't gotten one, of course, and there was only way he could be denied that courtesy: someone had proven that he was guilty of _high_ treason, the worst imaginable, and was, up until the time of his death, a prominent risk to the empire of Fovuc.

But he would never, never do such a thing. Bastiaan was a freaking model citizen, assassin-wise. The poster child of the Killer Angels. He had been set up. He _had_ to have been. There were sixty-three Killer Angels total. Bastiaan was dead, and she was fairly certain that neither she nor Athens had done it. So that left no less than sixty people in Fovuc with motives. Sixty people in the Angels. And, of course, the millions of Kanori who would celebrate his death.

Cat shook her head, her fruit forgotten, overwhelmed by the sheer scope of the past ten minutes. Bastiaan had been cancelled, hunted, reaped. She shuddered as she thought of his fate, of his last moments before death. It was obvious who had killed him, for only one person handled such cancellation.

The Hunter.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

It was cool in Glastadt, even in late summer. Today the sun was hidden, adding a chill to the air, the kind that was never strong enough to grab a sweater but laid unkind, frigid kisses on bare arms. Blue and silver banners whipped in the wind from atop watch towers that ran in regular intervals along the great wall that surrounded the city. Outside the wall, buildings clustered all the way from the massive gates to at least a mile beyond, past the Glass Bridge. Inside the wall, the city stretched out down wide boulevards and fountained courtyards, rising on low hills to a center. That center was the Palace, and the Inner City, again ringed by a pure, white wall, slightly lower than the sheer fifty feet of the great wall. Towers and domes and delicate bridges like spun sugar peeked above the smaller wall, looking down upon the rest of Glastadt.

People were everywhere, slipping among the market stalls in the outer city, selling wares or food; the designer shops and boutiques in the inner city were preparing for customers. Cars coasted down some of the busier streets, but traffic was not heavy. Glastadt wasn't a city made for cars and industry. It was made for people, and most of them walked. The people laughed, talked, argued – all the things that people do. Most of them _hurried_; down the streets, clutching children's hands, past the guards at the gates. All eager to return somewhere. A very astute observer might liken the diverse peoples of Glastadt to mice. Mice, who in a time of dire, dire need, asked the hawk to protect them. Mice, who were safe from any danger, except the most fearsome of them all – the talons of their beloved, terrible hawks.

For Glastadt was a city of war. The massive army held barracks in the outer city, and stood a vigilant guard rain or shine.

And, more so, it was a city of Angels. Angels, from a time when there was war in heaven and angels could kill. Glastadt was the King's city, the Chancellor's domain, the capital of all Fovuc. And the Killer Angels were its master.

There were sixty-three of them. Thirty Wolves, thirteen Griffins, five Dragons, and five Pegasi. In the Fovucian Army, there were many elite groups for the extraordinary soldier. But the Killer Angels surpassed even them by leaps and bounds. They were awesome in their skills, terrifying. They were the inhuman warlords; some laughed and called them the immortal hands of God. But the laugh was always uneasy, and died quickly.

The Wolves were the lowest ranked, but they could still spawn nightmares in the minds of their foes. The Griffins rose above them, and made all who looked upon them cry out in terror. The Dragons were invincible, overwhelming, exuded power that silenced crowds of thousands. Then came the Pegasi.

The gods of thunder, wrath, wisdom, war, pestilence. The Five Deaths.

People told tales about them around fires, in hushed voices. Mothers would threaten their children, "Be good, or Lucas will come after you," or, "Thorn comes and takes bad little girls away." To be a Pegasus was to be a King.

There was only one man above them, one man that even the Pegasi answered to. Alex Rapier was the king of kings of all Fovuc. He stood at Khan's right hand, the Killer Angels beneath him to do his bidding.

But on Khan's left, there was another man, cast in shadow and untouched by any hand, who followed no will but his own.

The world feared the Killer Angels, but the Angels feared the Hunter.


End file.
